When Niles was six, he remembered standing in a room with lots of people when they told his mother and father that they weren't allowed to take care of him anymore. He remembered that he'd cried a lot because he missed them very much and he wanted to see them again and he didn't like all these new adults who wanted him to be nice to them.

When Niles was eight, he realised that his parents had tried to go very far away without him and they'd never intended to come back. They'd never thought that they would be caught and punished for their crimes. He cried a lot, but then he was angry. He decided to never talk to his parents ever again and he promised himself that he would never ever never be bad like them.

When he was nine, the present from his parents arrived a month late and it was a large complicated toy that immediately got broken by someone who felt like they deserved everything and they were jealous so they snapped all the bits apart and he (accidentally not really accidentally) snapped one of their arms in half. He laughed at their pain and was sort of secretly glad that his present had been broken because now he didn't have to play with something his parents gave him.

When Niles turned ten years old, his mother called him on the phone two days late to sing him happy birthday and he screamed her and told her he hated her. For Christmas, she sent him an apology card and some money. He ripped the card up and burned it on the big fire they had at Christmas (and he pushed someone who had laughed at his hair so she burned her hand) but he kept the money.

When Niles was eleven, his father showed up when he was walking home from school. He tried to make conversation about how he was doing, if he liked the school that he was paying for, did he ever grow out of his sickness. Niles wanted to scream and punch him and also cry but he was way, way too scared that his father would take him out of the school that honestly he really quite liked even if he didn't have any friends. He got home and found himself silenced by the fear that his father would punish him for reporting him for illegally meeting up with him.

He cried in his bedroom for a long time because his eye(s) hurt and he was so afraid and he sort of liked what he had at the moment even though he was lonely and confused about himself and he hated having new foster parents every handful of months. But he didn't want that to be taken away just because his parents had money and they wanted to see him.

He wanted someone to talk to.

Later that year he joined the choir and discovered what attraction was and he was accused of being gay by his classmates because he liked singing. The joke was on them because something like that was going on but he was confused and he had no one to ask for help with all of that. So maybe he was gay and maybe he'd kissed Laslow once in a toilet after school because he wanted to know what was happening. But it didn't go any further than that. He definitely wasn't gay and Laslow, pretty tall and twelve years old to his eleven, definitely was not attractive in every way. Nope.

(Laslow had the nicest, richest voice Niles had ever heard and he had soft lips and a pretty face and he was unendingly nice to everyone even though he was shy when he wasn't flirting)

The day Niles turned twelve, his parents showed up after school and offered to take him to the cinema to see a film, his birthday treat. He looked around anxiously and just about managed to refuse. He hoped that Azura hadn't minded that he'd walked half a mile next to her until his parents finally stopped following him in their car. Afterwards, they sent him money and clothes to 'apologise for not being able to be with him'. It would have been nice if they were with him on the days following when they'd abandoned him, but they'd done the latter.

He performed in a concert at the end of the year and his mother and father were there in the hall even though he never even told them he was in the choir and that scared him. That scared him a lot because they knew where he was and what he did. And maybe he asked Camilla if she walked in the same direction as him so he could get most of the way home uninterrupted by his parents, but that didn't mean anything. He definitely wasn't scared of them (he was scared, but it worked and he barely had to talk to his parents after choir practises if he walked with her and Xander).

Just before Niles turned thirteen, he started walking home with Corrin every day. Corrin lived further away from school than he did (at the moment) and they took the same route home, so for weeks he saw nothing of his parents except a few texts that went unanswered as he didn't want to confirm that they had his mobile number. He was tempted to text back with a 'who are you, you have a wrong number' but it was too late for them to believe that now. Each text just went into a list of things he could bring up as evidence against them once he could go to school where he liked without their money (preferably after he had a place to live and a stable job, too).

And then, one day, it stopped being like that.

"Hey, Niles, there are some people to our right," Corrin said, moving his hand to pull it away from Niles'. Corrin had said he wasn't particularly bothered about what people thought about their relationship, but sometimes he got a bit worried in public.

Niles made a note in his mind to always walk on the other side. It was so annoying when there were things he couldn't see, but he normally opted for being blind to the side that wasn't the road when they were walking on a pavement. That was what he was always told he should do ever since he was very small, because it was safer or something. He looked over at the people who were probably trying to get past, ready to apologise (unless they looked like they were rude), and then he stopped. "You're not meant to be here," he said, and he reached for Corrin's hand again.

"But Niles, sweetie, we haven't seen you for months," his mother said, smiling at him. "Surely you understand that we're worried about you."

"Next time you have a kid, worry about them before you abandon them," he snapped, and he felt Corrin squeeze his hand. Niles couldn't stand to take his eyes off his parents to look over at him, but he hoped that Corrin would be texting his sister for backup. He did stuff like that sometimes, it was sweet.

His father threw his hands up, looking distressed and slightly angry. Niles flinched away. He couldn't attack them in broad daylight, could he? They would never be allowed near him ever again (they already weren't and it hadn't stopped them paying for his school and stalking him at every turn). "I told you, Niles, we've changed. We're not like that anymore, we're trying our hardest for you, I promise."

"You don't have to be like this," his mother said, and it looked like she was nearly crying. Good. He would never love her and he would never want her to feel anything but upset. "You don't have to act out, either, we love you no matter what and we'll give you attention no matter who you are." She was looking at Corrin and Niles wanted to snarl at her in the way that scared the social workers and then gouge one of her eyes out and see how she liked it.

"You don't have to follow me around," he said. Maybe if he could just pretend he was sort of worried about them instead they'd leave him alone. "If you keep following me, the people in court will find out and then you might get arrested again, and then I might lose my place at school. Please?" He forced himself to smile at them, and it worked. His mother sighed.

"I love you, Niles," she said, and though she was probably angling for a hug from him she just patted him on the shoulder. His father did nothing.

And then they were gone, and Niles almost slumped on Corrin's side in relief. "They're sort of scary," Corrin said, and Niles could only nod. They were terrifying, but one day he'd be able to get rid of them for good.