The first time she meets him, he is no more than 16 years old and shyly hiding behind the large man who had brought him over to Amber and informed her that she was to watch over and train him for an indefinite amount of time but gave her no other details.

An uncomfortable silence falls between the duo after the large man leaves, his mission of dropping off the young woman’s new charge now complete. The same young woman who has no friends and is now left with a young teen.

(Amber stares at the boy before her, smiling and baby faced, and suddenly the problem of showing him the ropes shrank into the size of a speck of dust against the daunting responsibility she has of leaching the innocence from him. Perhaps her opinion doesn’t count given her occupation, but it seems so wrong.)

She turns to glare at the door for a few seconds as though it’ll somehow reach the delivery man, who is now long gone, and convey to him how bad of an idea this is.

She stops glaring when there’s a small shuffling sound, and she turns back to the kid with the narrowed eyes. It gets him to stop smiling at least, but it only lasts precious three seconds before the smile is back in place and brighter than before as he reaches out a hand and introduces himself. His name is something ridiculously long and complex, and he must’ve seen the slight furrowing of her brows because he laughs (it’s a very pretty sound, and she almost wants to hit herself for thinking that) and says that she can call him BamBam.

Somehow, she manages not to tell him that it’s not much better than his actual name, even if it is easier to say. Instead, she tells him her first name because she’s not sure if she can trust the kid yet, and it’d be a problem if she decides to turn out the kid and he starts blabbing to the wrong sorts of people, the kind of people who want her dead.

If possible, his smile grows even wider as she grits out that she might as well give him a tour and he’ll have to sleep on the couch for the next few weeks because she doesn’t have a room prepared for him.

The brat’s only response is to ask when breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the snacks in-between are.

She’s half exasperated, half amused, and tells him that he can serve himself whenever because the kitchen is always stocked with food. She mentally makes a note to take the kid grocery shopping soon so he can pick out what he likes instead of eating her snacks.

He whoops and nudges her to start the tour because he’s hungry, and the sooner this is done, the sooner he can raid the kitchen.

Amber rolls her eyes and mutters something about “absurd” and “brats” and the kid just laughs and says he might as well start eating her if she doesn’t show him where the kitchen is.

She shows him where everything and they head to the kitchen last, just so she could spite him, and she doesn’t even mind that it’s like a child sticking their tongue out.

At BamBam’s shout of “finally!”, she fights against her better judgement, and gives him a small, tentative smile.  

She links hands with BamBam and pauses, looks down at their joined hands and back up with a frown.

“When did you grow so big?”

He just laughs, his voice noticeably deeper and lower (how has she not noticed this whole time?), and her frown deepens. Now she’s going to have to protect him from hormonal teenage girls too, and she’s not sure if she’s ready for that task.

But ah, she thinks, she can’t just leave the kid at their mercy and she’s had to do worse like do his laundry and realize how disgusting teenage boys actually are. And anyways, he’s grown on her. Quite literally.

A smile replaces her frown as she squeezes his hand (that had once felt so small and fragile but now envelopes her own hand and feels strong and steady) and pulls him into the coffee shop.

They bicker as they always do, with BamBam resorting to poking her sides and her retaliating by reaching up to pinch his ears ( “no, you cannot get a trenta hazelnut frappuccino, do you want to die, brat?”). It continues until they reach the counter where Amber places the order, and BamBam only slightly pouts when she gets him the frappuccino in a slightly more reasonable venti size. As they wait for their drinks to be finished, BamBam attempts to cuddle up to her to show his thanks but she only shoves him away with a roll of her eyes and a lazy “yeah, yeah”.

A small burst of laughter interrupts their continued arguing, and they both turn around to find that they’d attracted the attention of the small crowd waiting for their drinks as well.

BamBam merely laughs and gives a mock bow, but Amber flushes with embarrassment and silently curses herself for forgetting where she is, who she is.

She doesn’t belong with these people, with BamBam, with so much innocence.

There are children the age of the children some of her targets had, children who shook with fear as they walked in to find her standing over their parents’ dead bodies.

There are people in stuffy business suits, no doubt impatient with how slow the orders are coming out but still finding the antics of her and her ward amusing. Their mouths are curved up into small smiles and suddenly their faces are warpin