Is There Somewhere?

Part 19

A/N: I accidentally added another bad guy at the end of this chapter. I don't know how I managed to add another conflict when there's literally only one chapter left, but I managed it. It will all be resolved in the next chapter, though. We're introduced to Aden and I honestly didn't plan on using him, but he's a good bridge, I think, for Lexa's healing. So yeah, enjoy. We'll hear from Clarke soon enough.

~TGF

Feel Something – Jaymes Young

Two months later

Gustus had set Lexa up with Indra, a social worker within the foster care system. And, Lexa later found out, the one that conducted Lexa's adoption to the Woods. Once she'd brought her idea to the table, there was a lot of work to do, but with Indra's support they'd managed to get it rolling much quicker than Lexa expected.

Less than two months after bringing it up with Gustus, she'd been given a position with Indra, she was placed at a home for wayward kids between the ages of seven and seventeen to help out and personally helped try to alleviate some of the stress on Indra's shoulders. She still worked with her father and Nyko in a more supportive roll that dealt with finances and less with the business representation of the company. Gustus had basically temporarily come out of retirement to help Nyko settle in so there would be a much smoother transition in power once everything was finalized.

Gustus and Lexa invested heavily into a safe home for LGBT youth. It wasn't a well-known place and received very little financial help from the community at large, but Lexa insisted on rebuilding the home, providing the people living and working there a place to stay, and working there as often as possible to help with a staffing problem.

Two months into that project and the remodel was completely done, the kids were moved back in and Lexa started working with them immediately. Then, Lexa met Aden.

He was a thirteen-year-old kid living in the wayward foster home that Indra managed. At first, when Lexa introduced herself as the new owner, he stayed in the back of the common space, leaning against a pillar. But Lexa had felt his eyes on her, analytical and sharp. They talked briefly, where Aden asked her a couple of questions about herself before excusing himself to do something that must have been much more important.

As time passed, Lexa began to understand the way the foster home worked. Aden was followed around by the smaller children because he was their protector from the bigger kids, even though Aden wasn't that large for his age, or compared to some of the other older boys.

The day she saw his black eye was the day they forged a bond that couldn't be broken. Lexa knew who the kid was, a 17-year-old that loved to mess with the younger ones. He was always walking around menacingly, and he was less than two weeks away from being eighteen and finally on his own. Lexa knew there was no helping him, it pained her to even think it, but she knew it was true. The system had been trying to reform him from years. He was in and out of juvie and the epitome stereotype that gave foster kids a bad name, Lexa hated it.

Lexa had approached him, called him out and promised that if he touched another one of the younger boys he wouldn't make it anywhere in the city if she had anything to do with it. She may have threatened him too, but that didn't really matter because he wouldn't say anything. He, of course, wasn't afraid of some rich bitch.

Aden, apparently, had seen it all.

Now, the two of them were closer than she'd ever been to anyone else. Aden basically went wherever Lexa was if she could take him from the foster home. She learned that Aden loved basketball so they started going to the public court together every Friday afternoon. Lexa learned he had lived with his birth parents until he was ten and the living conditions had been repulsive, so he'd been taken away from them. She learned his father had beat him whenever he didn't have money for heroine and that his mom was normally too high to protect him. It broke the woman's heart to think about.