Chapter Text
“Hey Mom! I’ve got a case for you, thanks for looking it over, bye!”
Sklonda knows her son better than that.
It’s casual and normal, the way she lightly catches his wrist as he drops a heavy file folder on the table and turns away to scurry off. Riz, at least, has the decency to look moderately ashamed.
“No hug?” Sklonda asks with a raised eyebrow. “No coffee? No snooping around my office? I’d think my own son hates me.”
That’s about when she realizes that something is off.
Riz’s eyes dart to the file, then to the door, where they stay fixed as a familiarly weird laugh is eked out from behind his teeth. A laugh that’s very familiar, in fact. It’s a laugh that Sklonda has been hearing since he was three years old and trying to get away with pretending to bathe. One of Riz’s old-as-time tells, nervous laughter that means he’s deceiving her.
But the kid is sixteen, now. He might just be going through an awkward phase where he doesn’t want to talk about personal things with his mom. It’s normal, even if it does sting a little bit. She can’t be his entire world.
“Okay,” she says with a shrug, releasing his hand.
Again, though, Sklonda knows her son better than that. He trusts her implicitly and always has, even when it comes to talking about uncomfortable topics (she remembers with a mental shudder him broaching the subject of Kalina being sexually transmitted, which . . . well, it might be all well and good for the Thistlesprings, but once she and Riz had The Talk they had both decided they never wanted to explicitly discuss it again). She keeps one eye on him, even as she flips open the file.
“Where are you off to?” she asks.
Riz pauses, hand already on the doorknob to her cramped office. “Uh, Fab—Ad—Kristen’s,” he decides. “I told her I would help with homework.”
Sklonda means to just glance at the case and set it aside. She really just means to check, briefly, that Riz hasn’t messed anything up in the heading so that it’s processed correctly. He hasn’t done so before, but it’s customary at this point to check every case that passes her desk.
And, surprisingly, there is a mistake.
The very first page is an incident report, handwritten in Riz’s neat penmanship. The case number and date and time all seem to be in proper order, but there’s one glaring error.
“Riz?” Sklonda asks, not quite lifting her eyes from the error.
Riz, halfway out the door, freezes. “Uh, yeah?”
“You accidentally wrote your name on the line for the victim,” she tells him.
Even though she isn’t looking directly at him, Sklonda still sees Riz wince.
“That—that isn’t an accident,” he says quickly. “Anyways, I’ve gotta—”
“Riz, sweetie, why don’t you sit down?”
It isn’t really a question, and Riz understands that. He closes the door, sits in one of the two plastic guest chairs crammed into her office, and immediately starts tapping his claws against the side of his briefcase.
His face is carefully neutral. It’s a look that’s so painfully Pok that Sklonda almost wants to take a picture, wants to remember forever that expression that she had forgotten up until that very moment.
It wasn’t a good expression. It usually meant that Pok was coming to tell her that he had another mission, that he was going to be away for a couple of weeks, or maybe months, depending on how it goes. Closed-off and lukewarm as he prepared a brave face to meet whatever tearful goodbye she had for him.
She doesn’t take a picture. Sklonda just passes him her half-empty mug of coffee with a quirk of her lips, then focuses on actually reading the report.
Officer: Private Investigator Riz Gukgak
Complainant: Riz Gukgak
Incident occurred: between 5pm and 7pm, April 12th
Incident reported: 4:42pm, April 16th
Report:
Complainant, RG, is a 16 year old male goblin attending the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. RG was at school at 5pm on April the 12th, present for a weekend AV Club meeting with another member. Around 5:15pm, RG suggested they order pizza. The order was placed at 5:25pm. At 5:45pm, RG received a message on his crystal from the food delivery driver (screenshot of message attached in separate document). RG left the club meeting room at 5:46pm. He was intercepted before he reached the front doors of the school by another male student, AR, at 5:49pm. RG and this student talked for several minutes before the conversation turned to uncomfortable topics, like sex and stuff. The two of them were standing outside of the locker room. AR became aggressive and RG attempted to leave, but AR grabbed his arms and pulled him into the locker room, where he forced RG to engage in non-consensual sexual activity. At some point, AR made threats against the family and friends of RG should he ever tell and left at 6:44pm. RG left the room at 7:16pm. He collected the pizza box and briefly returned to the AV room before walking home at 7:25pm.
END REPORT
There’s more papers. Feeling almost outside of her body, Sklonda flicks through them: black-and-white school security camera photos printed out on paper, copied excerpts from dictionaries defining various sexual crimes, the yearbook photo of a half-elf boy that she doesn’t recognize, a several-page long testimony followed by a photo of a bruise on Riz’s wrist—
Sklonda closes the file before she can get any further.
Her baby.
Her baby didn’t even talk about it.
He didn’t say a single thing to her. He intended to drop the folder on her desk and run away, too scared—or maybe ashamed—
Sklonda takes a breath. Slow, calming. She doesn’t have time to freak out. That isn’t what Riz needs right now.
He’s pretending to text a friend, the mug of coffee set back empty on the desk, but his thumbs are still and his eyes keep flicking up to check her face. There’s anxiety in every harsh line of his body, his tail still and curled around the back of the chair.
Oh, poor baby.
Sklonda forces some kind of calm look onto her face. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Well, I’ll have to pass this off to someone else, but what will happen next is this kid’s expulsion from school and subsequent arrest. The department helps—” victims of sexual assault, she usually says (these cases tend to get shunted her way by nature of being a woman), but it chokes in her throat as she tries to apply that label to her son.
“The department helps pay for therapy,” she amends. “And since you’re family, it’s free, so we can get you signed up for sessions right away.”
Riz’s face screws up in protest. “Mom, I’m—”
“As an officer here, I would recommend it, and as your mother, it’s mandatory,” she says firmly.
She hadn’t even noticed. The top of the report said the incident was, what, a week ago? An entire week ago, and she’s been skipping dinners and letting him spend the night at friends’ houses and trusting him to go to school on his own—letting him go to school at all! She’s just been letting him walk into that building every day without dropping her off himself when he isn’t safe. He really, truly isn’t safe at the school as long as that boy is still—
Breathe, Lonnie, the voice in her head that always sounds like Pok’s reminds her. She needs to help Riz right now, not panic.
“How about we go get take-out and watch a movie at home,” she suggests. “I’ll take off work early. We don’t have to talk about it tonight—”
Riz’s shoulders slump in relief—
“But we will talk about it tomorrow morning.”
Luckily tomorrow is the weekend, so she won’t have to deal with this conversation while trying to get him sent to school.
What is she even supposed to say?
She’ll text Jawbone, she decides. She’ll swear him to secrecy, but she’ll ask him about how to best support Riz and how to address the conversation. And. . . .
Should she read the rest of the documents?
The testimony is probably more descriptive. It probably would help if she wanted to know the details—and, horrifically, she does. Is that wrong? Is it wrong to want to know exactly what happened to her son, even though he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it?
Would he even be okay with her reading it? Well, he gave it to her. Even so, he probably doesn’t want her reading it at home. But he doesn’t have to know, does he?
When Riz is turned away (heading out to the car, opening the office door to hold it for her), she grabs the file and stuffs it into her bag.
Maybe she’ll read it. Maybe she won’t.
But she wants it, just in case.
TESTIMONY OF VICTIM:
I was staying late at the AV club with Shellford. The robotics competition is coming up and they asked us to set up the sound system in the cafeteria, so we were planning what was going to go where. The time really got away from us—Gorgug texted me at 5 and asked if I needed a ride because he had just finished Bloodrush practice, but we hadn’t even started on mapping anything out so I said no. We figured we would probably be there until 9 or 10pm, so we decided to order some pizza for dinner to keep us going.
I got the Doordash notification around 5:45 and left to go pick up the pizza. I kind of went the long way around to get to the front of the school, the way that passes the locker rooms. I figured that Gorgug and Fabian had already left, but if they were still hanging around I was going to offer to give them some food. They weren’t there, but Amicus was.
Amicus is a senior on the Bloodrush team. I’ve talked to him before at parties and stuff, but he’s a fighter and I’m a rogue so we don’t share many classes. We had a history class together last semester and we were partners on a project for it once. I don’t know him too well. Fabian probably knows him better.
Anyway, Amicus stopped me in the hall outside of the boy’s locker room and asked what I was doing here so late. I told him about the AV club stuff. He knows Skrank and asked if he was there, and he seemed kind of disappointed when I said no.
He got weird after that. He started rubbing my shoulder as he talked about practice, but then he was asking me if I’d ever kissed anyone and told me that his ex thinks he isn’t hot. He asked me if I thought he was hot. I didn’t know how to answer, so I just kind of said what I thought he wanted to hear. I told him sure.
Then he kissed me.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried to push him away, but he was stronger. I told him I didn’t want to kiss, and he apologized and said he thought those were the vibes. Then he started talking about, like, sex and stuff, and his favorite things to do while having sex. He was holding my shoulder, otherwise I would have ran and hid.
He told me some really weird stuff. He said that he was super horny, and he just needed some help, and asked if I could help him. I told him no, and that I was trying to pick up pizza. He told me it would be quick. I told him no. When he wouldn’t let go of me, I yelled for help.
He grabbed my wrists and dragged me into the locker room and shut the door. He pushed me to my knees on the floor and cast hold person on me. Then he pulled down his sweatpants and put his dick in my mouth.
He aggressively used my mouth for a while. It hurt and it was gross and I didn’t want it. When he was done with that, he pulled me over and
He put me on a bench and proceeded to engage in non-consensual anal sex. The hold person spell wore off after he started, but he had one arm holding my wrists above my head and one pressed against my throat. I couldn’t escape. My stuff was out of reach. Whenever I could speak, I told him to stop. I felt sick and angry and bad. I was crying a lot. I think other stuff happened. I don’t remember.
When he was done, he threatened me. He told me that if I ever told anyone what happened, he would rape my mom. Then he got dressed and left. When I was able to stand, I got dressed and washed off my face and hands and clothes and left. The pizza was cold outside, but I brought it in for Shellford and walked home. I told him I was sick.
I showered again at home. I shouldn’t have, because it got rid of evidence, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted to get clean.
Having him at school makes me feel uncomfortable and unsafe. I’m afraid that he might do something similar to my friends or to me. I don’t feel comfortable walking alone. I feel like I can’t talk about it because of the threats, but I know I can’t keep it to myself. Amicus is dangerous and other people need to be warned.
ATTACHED:
1 photo of a bruise on the victim’s left wrist.
1 photo of a bruise on the victim’s left knee.
1 photo of a partially-healed cut on the victim’s brow.
1 photo of the back of the victim’s throat, clearly red and irritated.
1 photo of the victim’s neck, badly bruised.
1 photo of blood dripping from between victim’s buttocks.
1 screenshot of a food delivery text notification.