Chapter Text
Matt couldn't believe the kid they arrested. Couldn't believe a kid like that, who did things like that, actually existed. But he was sitting in the back of the roller anyway, slumped in exhaustion and looking all of a tall fourteen. Sixteen at most.
Guns, knives, lock picks, burner phones...and peanut m&ms.
Matt's nephew liked m&ms. Ate them one color at a time, in order of his least to most favorite. The perp was around the same age as Andy. Matt wondered if he sorted his m&ms by color too.
And the scars. Hell, the scars.
The one on his cheek was the worst. A spidery letter 'J' stretching from left cheekbone nearly to jaw, the thin, pink-and-silver lines of it jagged, halting. Because flesh didn't carve neatly. It stretched and pulled under even the sharpest blades, and it was clear the kid was fighting when he got it. Matt saw the places where the knife slipped off course, spiking away from the body of the letter. It was fully healed over, no swelling or lingering redness. That was more awful than if it was fresh. How old had the kid been when someone held him down and-?
That was the worst but it was far from the only scar. It wasn't even the only one on his face. A cut through an eyebrow, the dark pink of a fresh healed wound. A trio of gouges on the side of his chin, trailing down his neck. Those were older and better healed, only visible because of the faint silver sheen against the kid's darker complexion. A short, thick wedge of a scar peeked out from his hairline, right where a lock of curls were growing in white at the root.
As for the rest of him, there was acid burns on both forearms, splattered discolorations almost up to the elbow. A long, curved line up the back of one arm. The puckered circle of a bullet wound through a bicep. Several smaller knife scars on his arms and one on his collarbone. Cigarette burns on the back of his neck. Dozens of slashes and nicks across calloused knuckles and crooked fingers, layered across each other in a horrific map of violence perpetrated and received.
Matt didn't want to know what kind of marks were hiding under his ominously militaristic clothes.
Kids like that shouldn't have existed. Boys with facial scars the size of a man's palm, with weapons upon hidden weapons, with corded muscles and skinny wrists and terrified eyes-
But they did. Child soldiers did exist.
But not here. Not in America, Matt's mind wanted to protest. He'd seen pictures of children in Africa and the Middle East holding guns half as big as they were. But surely the United States-
That was fool talk.
Where there were bad men, there were hurt kids. Bad men were everywhere. It seemed to Matt, this time one of those hurt kids started hunting down the bad men instead. He couldn't say he blamed him but he couldn't condone it either.
Matt didn't know what was gonna happen to him. Prison? He was too young for it, but too violent for juvie. A mental institution? Heaven knew the kid was gonna need help, lots of help. For killing his own abuser, Matt could see a jury having leniency. But deliberately going out and finding more people to kill? That spoke to a much deeper mental instability and a disregard for the law and civil process. He could have gone to the police if he wanted to help other children like him. Could have contacted the FBI, the Justice League, even a social worker.
Matt knew the system was deeply flawed. Hell, he was a black police officer from a major metropolitan area! Matt was intimately familiar with the reasons a battered brown kid might have for not trusting law enforcement. It did not excuse murder. With the intelligence, resourcefulness, and competency the kid possessed, he could have found another way.
But neither could that kind of trauma be ignored. They didn't know how the kid's mind had been twisted or how he was manipulated. He might be working on his own or he might be under the control of some other, worse influence. He might just be broken beyond repair.
Which was why there would be an investigation, a trial, a jury. The kid would get help; whatever else happened, Matt would do everything he could to ensure that boy was helped. There wasn't much a beat cop could do once the justice system took the case, but he would work with what he got.
For once though, Matt was hopeful that wouldn't be necessary. He'd heard good things about the BAU.