Maybe You'll Live For Me Sometimes- Adopted by the Killjoys

Part One And A Half

Mikes's POV

But that wasn't the end of the day with Adeline and her... confusing, to say the least, parents. Gee and I headed upstairs in the building to try to find our friends Frankie and Ray, but to no avail at all before what I heard coming from downstairs.
          And what I heard downstairs was scary. A hard push into the wall with the sound yelling. So I went out to the stairs to investigate. It was Adeline's father who did the pushing, pushing Adeline into the wall as her father was yelling at her. I didn't hear much of what he said to her, but what I did hear was chilling: "You have no idea what your mother and I will do to you if you run away from us like that ever again." I saw the terrified look on Adeline's face through it all.
          It was loud enough for the whole building to hear, but no one bat an eye. I turned to Gee, who also shivered at the sight, and said as I pulled out my phone, "we should do something about this."
          Gee nodded in agreement. "You're right, that is scary. It's sad that no one bat an eye." Then I dialed CPS, reporting Adeline's parents.

Shortly after, an agent arrived. I approached him and directed him to Adeline's parents. As expected, they were enraged to be called out. "It's not a big deal," said her mother, "we were just getting her to behave and stay with the family!"
          "Why so sensitive?" asked her father.
          "Calm down, let me hear what everyone has to say," said the agent. "Michael and Gerard, I'll interview you two first. And you, Adeline, who do you want to go in with?"
          Adeline, confused, walked over to me and jumped up to grab my arm. So, she walked in with me and Gee to have the interview in a private room of the building.

The case worker seemed nice and understanding and even let Adeline speak some... but that was all an act. He acted that way only to take the side of her parents and invalidate her feelings. "You should have just kept up with them then," said the case worker to Adeline. "Maybe they wouldn't have treated you that way if you would have behaved better."
          Adeline, who I was holding, gave the case worker a confused look.
          I looked at him with the same confusion, mixed with anger at how insensitive he was. "Are you really trying to blame her for this?"
          "If she gets lost and disobeys, she pays the price. They're teaching her a good lesson," the judge demanded.
          "Ah yes, because being pushed up against a wall and yelled at by your own parent after getting lost in a city that's on fire isn't damaging enough," Gee sassed.
          "She needs to learn early!" shouted the worker. "You two are blowing this way out of proportion. Parents would never do that in public."
          "We witnessed this with our own eyes though," I argued, "The fact that you're denying it and speaking the way you are about it says a lot about you."
         "I'm quite sure I know what I'm talking about. I went through that same stuff as a kid and I turned out fine."
          Aaand there it is. Fuming but I had to keep it inside. There is no way he turned out fine. The case worker directed us to leave the room and let her parents in.

Adeline's POV

Even at the young age of four, I wasn't clueless. Someone who supposedly loves me wouldn't push me against a wall to yell at me. I knew it then, but I thought I was trapped and couldn't get out of it.
          It was the fact that Mikes and Gee tried for me. No one else around me, not even my mom and dad, was willing to save my life earlier. And no one else in this building except for Mikes was willing to call out what I just went through, and have been going through back at home for a while now too.
          I felt safer in his arms earlier and during the interviews than I ever did at my own home with my own parents. But I still had to go back "home" with them.

On the way out back to my parents, I asked Mikes something: "Mikes?"
          He bent down to my level. "Yes, kiddo?" 
          "Will you wemember me?"
          He looked at me with a sad smile and nodded. "I will." Then we hugged, and I reluctantly walked back to my mom and dad, waving "goodbye" at him, after still knowing I was failed by the system.