#aaron bow

You try to stake Mitch, who catches it midair after turning around to do so because he wasn’t even facing in your direction. He screams that you’re dead and starts bounding toward you, and then right behind him is some other guy who also screams and starts sprinting at you and the girl that ate a book in front of you! So now you have three vampires sprinting at you, all of which 1. immediately go into a frenzy 2. rush you at the same time, eating two more stakes in the process like it’s NOTHING 3. and then one of them RIPS THE TREE YOU’RE IN OUT OF THE GROUND 4. the other withers your hand and breaks your bones and before you can really brace yourself 5. the freak that ripped someone’s head off on his way to you jumps through your chest? All in under thirty seconds. And the bat freak said she was gonna pass you around like a juice box.

Like imagine you've been meticulously tracking these monsters you believe to be vampires. You find out which car belongs to them, find out who the license plate is registered to, break into that house and be assaulted by the smell of an old couple rekindling their marriage and be subsequently framed for so many more robberies only for that same car to get abandoned on the edge of town without a second thought and swapped for some weird looking HORSE.

Aaron asking Cody for help identifying monsters. Cody being able to protect himself and his magical friends because Aaron trusts him. He can misdirect the hunter.

Cody asking Aaron if he needs to talk to somebody because he knows about the horrific way his parents died and that the guy is completely right, it was vampires that killed Aaron's parents, and Cody is the only kind person around Aaron that would believe him. But Cody can't say he believes him, because that endangers him and the magical beings he cares about.

But also, maybe if Aaron just had a friend who didn't treat him like he was crazy, who loved him gently through his grief, Aaron could cope with his loss in a less murderous way and they could be real friends, and Cody could be safe.

Aaron dying the same way his parents did, to vampires in a Banksy scheme, and Cody feeling guilty for feeling relief. Cody knowing that Aaron was right all along to be scared of vampires, to believe they were frenzied killers. Cody still choosing to be on the side of his own species' forsworn enemies and friend's killers.

Cody forever wondering whether maybe, if someone had talked to Aaron about the real dangers of the monster world, about the oppressive forces that suffocate humans and magical beings alike, Aaron could have been an ally in the war rather than an ignorant soldier forever shooting in the wrong direction.

But Cody was never brave enough to try.