If not for the clock and the calendar, Aaron could've sworn his first three months in captivity were really just one excruciatingly long day. The time blurred into nothing but a hellish stretch of sameness; each week was nearly indistinguishable from the next. He slept; he read; he moped. He commiserated with Jason. He got slapped around on poker nights, and whenever else the Roycewoods felt so inclined. He ate when food was given; he went hungry when it wasn't. Lather, rinse, fucking repeat.
In just ninety days, he found himself becoming almost anesthetized by the dark monotony of the basement. He went from Aaron Hotchner, a tough-as-nails foster child, unshakeable enough to rival any politician, to Aaron Roycewood, a glorified ghost. A wisp of black hair and glassy eyes who drifted aimlessly between the cellar rooms, just waiting for the next iteration of gloom.
As all caged-in creatures do, he adapted. For better or for worse, Aaron's demeanor turned to steel; he hadn't cried since that week after the first poker night. He learned the subtle art of silent obedience, which saved him from a few beatings, but certainly not all of them. He learned how to subsist for days on only bitter sink water. Most useful of all, perhaps—he learned how to lose himself in fictional worlds. Roger Roycewood, for some reason, supplied the boys with new boxes full of books every week, and so Aaron had no choice but to become an avid reader. He found friends in Ponyboy Curtis, and Scout Finch, and Huck Finn. He felt an uncanny allyship with the boys from The Lord of the Flies; he, too, was stranded in no-man's-land, virtually alone, made wild by the wasteland that surrounded him. He dove deep into the entire anthology of Stephen King. (Roger Roycewood was apparently a big fan of horror novels. Go figure.) Strangely though, Aaron came to cherish King's books; there was something inexplicably comforting about feeling fear because of fiction. He took solace in the knowledge that the terrifying stories he read were, by nature, unreal. The knots that Salem's Lot spun his gut into were man-made. The racing heart that accompanied It was a product of imagination. He could close these books and relish in the fact that none of it was true. Aaron learned how to paint monsters in his mind, and by doing so, he made peace with the darkness. Sometimes, as his eyelids succumbed to the pull of sleep, he'd pretend he was simply in a particularly horrific Stephen King novel, one that could be shut at any given moment. He knew it was a childish delusion, but in certain situations, he figured, immaturity was necessary to survival.
Aaron and Jason came to think of themselves as brothers, and there was nothing melodramatic about it. It wasn't because of some lovely, sentimental connection they shared; they were brothers because they had to be. They relied on each other because there were no other options. It was more for needfulness' sake than anything; they tended to each other's wounds, and they whispered long into the night about the lives they'd been robbed of, and they single-handedly kept one another from slamming their fists into walls. Such bleak and dreary days were enough to drive anyone mad.
So they figured they were past companionship; no, they were brothers who shared the dull pulse of concrete instead of blood. They were carved into each other's family trees like surgical incisions; wounds necessary for the greater good. Whatever greater good they had left, anyways. It was an unidealistic bond, yes—but often, those prove to be the strongest. There's something undeniably human about being attached to another person only because of desperation and circumstance. The two boys depended on each other for the simple matter of sanity.
In fact, it was because of Jason that Aaron agreed to do the worst thing he'd ever done before. The worst thing he'd ever even contemplated doing.
On the same day in which Aaron scribbled an 'X' over April 15th on their calendar, Roger and Anita showed up at the boys' bedroom door. She was holding two saran-wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He was holding a baseball bat.
The sight of the Louisville Slugger sent all of Aaron and Jason's careful conditioning hurtling down the drain. They both scuttled to the far corner of the room like frightened mutts, pressing themselves into the wall. Each was murmuring his own pleas for mercy.
"Now, now, boys," Anita said, taking a few steps forwards, her flowery pink dress catching a draft of basement air. "You know the rules. If you do as we say, there won't be any need for discipline."
The five years of age that Jason had on Aaron showed themselves like an instinct. A natural urge to protect. Still trembling himself, Jason stepped in front of the younger boy and locked his jaw in place.
"We're going on an errand, boys," Mr. Roycewood said from the doorway, flashing them a rotten yellow smile. "How would you like a new little brother?"
Behind his human shield, Aaron reflexively cried out, "No! Don't take anyone else!"
Anita's face darkened. She hurried over to them. With one flick of her bony arm, she yanked Aaron out from behind Jason.
"You're going to do the honors this time," she hissed. Her spittle sprayed in a mist across his face. "It's your turn to prove yourself."
Aaron quieted his shaking frame for a moment and mustered up a hateful glare. "I won't help you. I won't."
Anita just smiled and grabbed both of his shoulders, effectively anchoring him in place. She looked back at Roger and nodded. The man sauntered up to Jason whilst tapping the head of the bat in his chubby palm. There was a grin on his vermin-like face. Anita brought her head closer to Aaron's.
"You'll help us, won't you Aaron?"
His lower lip quivered. A wide-eyed Jason had flattened himself against the wall in a desperate bid to evade the approaching form of Roger Roycewood. It was useless—he was cornered.
"Don't do it, Aaron!" Jason yelled. "Don't let them get another kid!"
Aaron could only look on in horror as the bat drove itself into Jason's knee. There was an audible crack. The older boy crumpled to the ground, groaning.
"Whaddya say, Aaron?" Mr. Roycewood chuckled, twirling his weapon. "Think we oughta smash his arm next?"
Jason didn't urge Aaron to fight them this time; he was too occupied writhing in pain on the floor. Mr. Roycewood raised the bat high over his head.
"Stop!" Aaron cried. "Stop! I'll do it! I'll help you!"
It was the coldest April in recent history, and in the very same week that Derek Morgan was snatched from a back alley in suburban Virginia, the county was overtaken by a series of rather violent thunderstorms. The Roycewood house was old and crude enough that this was no small issue.
At least, it was no small issue for those that resided in the basement.
Aaron had laid Derek's unconscious body in the bottom bunk—it'd been a good number of hours since the van had pulled back into the house's long, isolated driveway, but their new addition was still in a chloroform-made sleep.
Jason, meanwhile, having not attended the abduction excursion, was splayed out on the twin bed, his face screwed into a perpetual frown of pain. He'd pulled the leg of jeans up over the knee that Roger had whacked. Already, it had swollen to double its size, and was turning a rather alarming shade of plum purple.
Aaron had barely spoken a word since returning to the cellar. He sat beside Jason on the twin bed with cheeks whiter than bone. His eyes screamed that he was in shock.
"It's not your fault, you know," Jason managed, wincing as he shifted himself upright.
Aaron didn't—couldn't—even look his way.
When the rain started, the boys could hear it pounding against the house from all the way down in the basement. It was that fat sort of rain, the kind that comes down so hard it's as though each droplet is supercharged. The muffled drumming of it hitting the upstairs roof was somehow comforting.
That was, until the dripping started.
The rainwater smelled earthy and dank as it seeped down the alphabet wallpaper, cutting stark pathways across the covered concrete. Aaron felt a drop hit the back of his neck, and he shivered. The room only seemed to grow colder as it got damper, and both Aaron and Jason quickly realized how dicey this predicament could prove to be.
But they were soon distracted from the leaking, because the new boy began to stir.
Derek spent his first waking minutes pinning the dark-haired boy to the wall and yelling in his face.
"Fuck you! Where am I? Fuck you, you kidnapping motherfucker!"
Even amidst his fury, Derek found the other kid's sheer lack of a reaction slightly unnerving. The boy just stood there and took it. No words uttered; no emotions shown. He stared back at Derek with empty eyes. When Derek's fit of rage had all but exhausted him, he released the boy and huffed back down onto the bottom bunk. The second kid, who was smaller than the first but appeared older, was staring at him from underneath the baby blue sheets of a twin bed. The three adolescents all surveyed each other from their respective corners of the room, forming a triangle of tension. A crack of thunder rang out from above ground. The rhythmic pitter-patter of water dripping down from the ceiling underscored their strained silence.
"What's your name?" the dark-haired, vacant-eyed boy asked. His voice was low and somber.
Derek was too tired to continue with the hostile facade. He ran both hands over his face and tried not to let his fear strangle him. "Derek. Derek Morgan."
The two other boys made pointed eye contact.
"Forget your last name," the curly-haired brunette said curtly. "The only last name you're allowed down here is Roycewood. I'm Jason."
"Aaron," the first boy grunted.
Another jarring burst of thunder. Derek's heart felt as though it was malfunctioning. He began to say something, but was cut off rather abruptly by Jason sticking out his hand.
"Look, kid. We're gonna explain everything we can, but you've gotta try and not freak out. Right, Aaron?"
Aaron didn't offer any eye contact. He just nodded at the dampening floor.
All Derek could do for the next few hours was listen and gawk as both boys told their tales of abduction, and shortly thereafter, relayed to him precisely what went on in the Roycewood house. Bile bit at the back of his throat each time they mentioned the frequent abuse they were subjected too. Derek's mother may have been negligent, but she'd never beaten him within an inch of his life, or forced him to go days without food. The stories these boys were telling were comparable to horror films. He'd never have believed they were true were he not standing on the hallowed grounds they spoke of.
Derek learned about poker night. He learned that laundry day was whenever Mrs. Roycewood decided that they stunk too bad to even smack anymore. He learned that any meal that wasn't a stale sandwich was cause for celebration. He learned that the first aid kit laying on the bureau had been bestowed upon them just the previous month, when Aaron had been hit so hard by a man they called No-Neck that his eyebrow had split open. (Apparently, neither Mr. or Mrs. Roycewood had felt like cleaning up the wound, and so they'd thrust the little white box into Jason's hands and told him to figure something out). Derek learned which books were the best for re-reading, and how the shower temperature never crept above freezing, and how the pink door in the hallway had never once been unlocked.
By the time they were done talking, some strange part of Derek felt like he knew these boys. Like they weren't strangers who'd recently grabbed him off the street, but allies that were tied to him in a sad yet inextricable way.
"Haven't you ever tried to get out? Why didn't you run when you were let outside?" he asked, shivering. The boys exchanged another grimace. Jason sighed and gingerly pulled the bedsheets off of his legs. The knot in Derek's stomach tightened—the boy's knee was a reddish-purple mound of swelling. It was a sight so gruesome that even he, a twelve-year-old, could tell that Jason belonged in an emergency room.
"Jesus Christ…"
"I couldn't run," Aaron muttered, balling up his fists. "They would've killed him."
Not much more was said that night. The misery in the other boys' silence told Derek everything he needed to know. When he finally surrendered to sleep, he dreamt of open doors.
The boys would come to know the days that followed as simply the flooding week. It was the morning after Derek's abduction that they realized the true gravity of their circumstances.
Derek Morgan awoke in a strange bed, in a strange room, in a strange house, and yet his first thought was not of his kidnapping.
No. What registered foremostly in his mind was the water.
At least a foot of filthy water had accumulated in their bedroom overnight. It nipped at the sides of Derek's bedsheets, almost reaching the base of the bottom bunk. The impromptu lagoon was a murky brownish-green, as though it belonged in some marsh that was rotting from the inside out. It wasn't difficult to deduce where all the rainwater had dripped from; the alphabet wallpaper was soaked. The moisture only served to intensify the mildewy smell that already plagued the basement. Their bedroom door was wide open, and Derek could see that water sat in the same stagnant manner out in the hallway. He could only assume it was this way in the other cellar rooms as well.
Most ominous of all, perhaps—he could still hear rain pounding overhead. The storm had yet to cease. Water hadn't stopped running in muddy channels down the walls, tearing the wallpaper in some places so that it sagged like dead skin.
Jason was sitting up in his bed, just staring at it all. A rustling from above told Derek that Aaron was going to attempt to make his way down. Sure enough, as agile as a flying squirrel, Aaron flung himself out of the top bunk and leapt across the chasm, landing perfectly on Jason's bed. All three boys took a moment to stare at one another. The bewilderment on each of their faces whispered, we're totally fucked.
"What do we do?" Derek choked out. "Has this ever happened before?"
Their wide eyes told him that no, it had not. Suddenly, Aaron's cheeks went even paler. He sat straight up.
"The books."
That was all it took. In a flash, both other boys had stumbled off of the twin bed and into the knee-high cloudy water, propelling themselves out the door. (At least, Aaron propelled himself. Jason limped like a crippled soldier, due to his knee, but he was nonetheless determined). Derek didn't quite know what exactly Aaron was referring to, but he knew it sounded urgent, so he stepped into the flood and followed.
Once he'd trudged his way through the swamped hallway and reached the equally swamped living room, he saw what they were so frantic about. Stacked high up the walls lay more books than Derek had ever seen in his life. Aaron and Jason quickly began to grab heaping armfuls. The bottom shelves had already been consumed by the steadily rising water.
"Put them in the top bunk!" Aaron cried, already scuttling back into the hallway with his pile of thick novels.
And so, for what must've been hours, they made countless trips from the living room to the bedroom, never once slowing their fervent pace. They lugged load after load across the flooded hallway, depositing their hauls on the relative safety of the top bunk. Soon, the bed was stacked so high with books that some scraped the ceiling. The boys were soaked to the bone and freezing by the time the shelves had been emptied of everything salvageable.
Derek and Aaron had to practically drag Jason along with them as they waded back to the bedroom. The oldest boy's expression appeared pained to the point of agony. The water had risen almost to Derek's waist by then—both the twin bed and the bottom bunk had been swallowed up by the mucky tides. They had no choice but to climb into the top bunk and wedge themselves beside the piles of books like soggy sardines.
Aaron pulled something small and blue and round out from behind his pillow. The clock.
"I brought it up here last night," he explained, wringing out the bottom of his tee shirt. "Just in case."
He also revealed that he'd managed to nab the calendar the night before, along with the first aid kit and the three eerie teddy bears that the Roycewoods had gifted them.
"How'd you know to grab it all?" Derek asked, wide-eyed.
"I didn't," Aaron said, shrugging. "But when you're down here long enough, you learn to expect the worst."
Jason fell into a fitful sleep after that, and Aaron and Derek both began to silently read in order to distract themselves from the damp chill that hung in the air. The rain still could be heard pelting the house above, and the veritable river that had overtaken their living quarters was only growing.
Some time later, when the clock read 11:33pm, the lamp on their bureau tumbled into the abyss of water. The room instantly grew dim. Only the dull ceiling light remained, and it surely wasn't enough for reading, so both boys resigned themselves to sit idly and stare at the concrete walls.
"You got a family?"
Derek, who'd been half-asleep, jerked his head to the side, startled. Aaron was still looking straight ahead, but his eyes were dreamy, almost as though he was lost in some fantasy world.
"Not much of one," Derek replied. "Dad's dead. Mom's long gone."
Aaron finally snuck a glance his way. His expression was curious, and strangely knowing.
"So where'd you come from?"
"I was born in Chicago. Bounced around a few foster homes there after my mom… after she got
bad. Got sent to a group home in Virginia a few years back."
Aaron's mouth drew itself into a tight, sad line. He nodded. "The foster system sucks."
Derek tried not to let the surprise show on his face; he'd assumed Aaron's expertly crafted
apathy had been a byproduct of the cellar. Who knew he and this kid had past lives in common?
Then again, he supposed, their past lives were just that—figments of the past. A world far removed from this one.
"Aaron?" he asked, sounding painfully small.
"Yeah?"
Thunder rumbled overhead. Derek swallowed hard. "How do you do it? Live down here? How do you not go crazy?"
Aaron stared straight at him, and it felt as though his eyes skimmed Derek's very soul.
"You do go crazy," he said. "It's impossible not to. But you keep going anyways."
A treacherous lump had formed at the back of Derek's thoat, threatening to expose how close to tears he really was.
"How?"
Aaron tilted his head to the side and paused for a moment.
"You don't let those sick motherfuckers see you break," he finally said. "And you pretend that this is how life's always been. And you count on your brothers."
Derek furrowed his brow. "I haven't got any brothers."
Aaron smiled, but there was a deeply sorrowful quality to it. "You do now. I wish you didn't have to have 'em, but you do. I wish you never met me, but you did. And I really am sorry, you know. About all of it. We're just pawns in their twisted game."
A single tear moseyed it's way down Derek's cheek. He hoped it was too dark for Aaron to notice.
"Do you protect each other like brothers?" he asked after a beat.
Aaron gnawed on his lower lip, considering.
"In small ways. Whatever we can get away with. Sometimes one of us will intentionally piss off a Roycewood just to keep them away from the other one. Or on poker nights, we switch off annoying the dude who wins the slugger's round. You know, so they'll choose us. That way we each get weeks off."
Derek nodded. Another tear slipped from his eye. He quickly flicked it away.
"Really though," Aaron continued, staring down at the low-lit flood below them, "mostly we protect each other from ourselves. That's how we don't go totally insane—we stop each other from losing it."
Derek considered his next question very carefully. It was loneliness alone that prompted him to even ask.
"Do you love each other like brothers?"
Aaron's eyes once again drifted off into dreamland. For a moment, Derek thought he wasn't going to answer at all.
"I don't know," he said. "But we need each other. Sometimes, I think that counts for even more than love."