Chapter Text
Cecil lifted his head with a groan. His head felt like it was about to split in two, and the rest of him ached as well. It didn’t help that he was lying in…
Rubble? And he was completely naked?
Oh.
He had lost control. Right. Something about a device… He could barely remember Carlos examining him with gentle hands running over his head and prodding at something
He lifted his hand and felt the back of his head. Sure enough, there was the small, sharp lump buried in his hair, right at the base of his skull.
He sat up as others came over, folding his legs to politely cover as much of his nakedness as he could. Intern Ashley was leading a few citizens and carrying a blanket, and Cecil smiled. This one could go far if she had survived this.
She silently handed him the blanket, and he was startled by the sorrow in her eyes as he wrapped it around himself. It made sense. No doubt he had accidentally killed a number of people. He scanned the faces surrounding her, noting similar notes of sadness and sorrow. All familiar, but none of them the one he wanted to see right now.
“Ashley, where is Carlos? I want to thank him for deactivating this thing,” he said, looking at her with a small smile because he remembered now. Staring down at Carlos while he was fiddling with a machine, and trying to figure out whether this human was food or not. Part of him roared that it was fresh meat walking to him, and another part screamed back that it was Carlos and that he was fixing this. That dilemma had given Carlos the time he needed, and all that he remembered after that was pain as he forced himself back into the form of a harmless human.
Ashley looked stricken. “Cecil…” she started, trailing off helplessly. Cecil was startled at the sheer anguish in that one word. Something was wrong. Something was horribly, terribly wrong.
“Ashley, where’s Carlos?” Cecil asked. No one looked like that if everything was alright. Ashley wouldn’t look like that if Carlos was alright. “Ashley! Tell me!” he demanded harshly when she hesitated for too long.
The intern shrank back, tears spilling from her eyes, and it was another person who pointed to another crowd of people. Cecil didn’t even notice who it was, opting instead to make his way to where he had pointed.
Carlos had to be alive. He had to be. Cecil was back, so Carlos had to be there. His perfect Carlos was here. He would be injured, inevitably, but it would not be life threatening. Or maybe it was life threatening, but Night Vale had amazing doctors and healers, everyone knew that. They could save him. Cecil knew they could and they would because he was Carlos.
“Carlos!” Cecil shouted when he got closer, skidding to a stop when he saw Carlos laying on the ground, and he knew he had been wrong. Carlos always seemed larger than he was, even while asleep. He was shy at times, and so tiny, barely standing taller than Cecil’s shoulder, but so alive. He filled a room with his presence alone. His chattering words and phrases dispelling any silences.
He seemed so small now, laid out at the base of a building.
“Carlos!” It was a scream this time. A plea for this to be a false image, a mirage, a hallucination, anything. So long as it wasn’t real.
He ran, not caring about the broken glass slicing his feet or the bloody footprints he was leaving. The crowd parted when he got there, and he fell next to his Carlos, heedless of the blanket as it fell around him.
Carlos’ glasses were broken, his face bloody from a nosebleed, the front of his labcoat stained with blood from his face and wounds. There were still some pieces of glass in the wounds that peppered his front. One had gone straight through his ribcage, and although it was removed now, the blood and the hole still remained.
Cecil didn’t even realize he was murmuring anguished denials of his own sight until he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“From what we could tell, it was an accident,” the Sheriff said quietly. “Carlos guessed that there was still enough of you in there that you wouldn’t attack him like you did everyone else you saw. And he was right. You didn’t attack and didn’t leave. It gave him the time he needed. But when you were convulsing, a tentacle hit him from behind and threw him into a building. Some broken window glass must have lodged in the wall. He bled out before we could get here. I’m sorry, Cecil.”
“You should have saved him! What good are you all if you couldn’t save him!” Cecil shrieked, all composure lost. This was Carlos. He had saved the town on so many occasions. He had gone beyond what he had needed to do, saving Night Vale from so many things that would have destroyed it. Including himself.
He pulled the impossibly small, battered body against himself, straightened the broken glasses on the still, bruised and bloody face, and let himself scream.
-----
Cecil finally decided to open the bag of Carlos’ things. He had ended up spending the last couple days in a stupor, ever since he had returned from the hospital. They had removed the deactivated device and given him some pills for the physical pain.
There was nothing anyone could do about any of the other pain he was feeling. That pain was still making itself known.
The bag crinkled as he opened it, and he gently dumped the items on the ground. Most of them were normal Carlos things: pens, a few folded bits of paper, a couple crumpled receipts, no doubt from the pockets of his ubiquitous lab coat (one from from Arby’s, just a few nights before this started), his wallet and… his phone?
Cecil’s brows drew together in muddled confusion. Carlos rarely kept his phone on him. It was one of the things that made Cecil roll his eyes about Carlos, one of those imperfections that made him Carlos. It didn’t make sense that he would have it on him when he was - when he was saving Cecil.
He picked up the phone, and felt a piece of paper on the back. He flipped it over, and saw the sticky note.
“Cecil -
The voicemail is for you.
-S”
Why had the Sheriff had Carlos’ phone? He frowned and thought about it for a moment before it fell into place.
Carlos had given the Sheriff his phone to pass on to Cecil.
The red light was slowly blinking, indicating a low battery, so Cecil stood and went in to the kitchen, sitting on the counter and plugging in the phone.
He quickly navigated to the voicemail, pausing before hitting play. He hoped it was Carlos. He thought it was Carlos. It had to be Carlos.
“Cecil, oh fuck, Cecil,” Carlos started, and Cecil could hear the anguish in the second part, before Carlos stopped for a moment. He started again, “Cecil, if you’re listening to this, then this worked, and I fixed you, and that I died when doing it. Cause otherwise I’ll get my phone back, and I’ll probably just delete this. Shit. I know my chances going into this. They’re slim at best. But if you’re listening to this, then it means it was worth it, cause the other option is destroying Night Vale to destroy you, and that is a last resort, nothing more. Cecil, I love you so much. So much. The best memories of my life are here, with you, and fuck!”
Cecil was surprised at the volume at the end, and wiped the tears from his eyes, but they just kept coming. They wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t make them stop.
“Cecil, it’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.” The harshness to Carlos’ tone hurt, despite his attempts to not let it. Carlos had known he was probably going to die after he left this message. No doubt he was blaming Cecil for this misfortune.
“I’m thirty-fucking-one, Cecil.” He had forgotten how young Carlos was. Now he would never get older.
“I’m supposed to be with you for decades! We’re supposed to wait another couple of years, get married in some crazy, over the top, Night Valean wedding, clean out one of the bedrooms, adopt a kid, and grow old.” His voice was thick with emotion, and it didn’t help the tears running down Cecil’s face “Well. I’ll grow old. I don’t know how long your life span is, so maybe this is just a foregone conclusion, me dying and leaving you alone. But still, I should be with you for decades, Cecil! Fuck!”
Cecil hadn’t even bothered to stop the tears running down his face when Carlos paused, just let them drip down. He had been so sure Carlos was going to rail at him for being the cause of his death. Instead, he lamented the time they were never going to have together.
Carlos took a shaking breath before continuing “Now Cecil, I know you. Better than you know yourself sometimes. Don’t blame yourself.” Cecil let out a gasping sob, pressing his free hand over his mouth.
He should have known. Carlos, his Carlos, would have never blamed him. How could he have forgotten that?
“I know you will. You’ll blame yourself for all of this. You’ll blame yourself for eating those people, for killing me in whatever way you do, and you’ll say you didn’t fight hard enough, that you should have kept it back for longer.” How did Carlos know? How did he know that those were his thoughts? That those were the thoughts that had made him drink himself to sleep last night?
“Don’t.” Cecil clung to the phone, trying to breathe through the tears. “You’ve done what you could, under impossible circumstances. The device is making it hard for you to resist doing that. You’ve done all you can. And if - “ Carlos took another deep breath in the message, and Cecil just sobbed. “And if I die doing this, it isn’t your fault. I love you Cecil. I love you so much. You’ve done so much for me, you’ve saved me so many times, and you don’t even know it. It’s my turn now, my love.”
Cecil shook his head. “Carlos,” he moaned as the Sheriff’s voice came in the background of the message.
“He’s getting closer to the evacuation site. We have to go now.”
“Carlos, don’t. I’m not worth it!” Cecil cried into the phone, begging Carlos to hear him through time, wishing this was a phone call and not just a voicemail.
“I have to go now, Cecil.”
“No!” Not yet. Just give me a few more minutes of your voice. I just need more of you. I need you to come back. “Don’t go!”
“Remember that I’ll always love you, no matter what happens. Goodbye, Cecil. I hope - I hope you have a good life without me, and I hope you find someone else to love, and Cecil just make this worth it. Goodbye, Cecil, goodbye.” There was a hard click, and the message was over.
Cecil screamed, he couldn’t help it. The loss and guilt that he had started to push back was standing at the forefront again, tearing a hole through his chest.
There would never be anyone else, his life couldn’t be good again, there was nothing that anyone could do that would make this better. His Carlos was gone, and he had killed him. Even though some of the guilt had been absolved by Carlos’ words, there was still enough to rip through his soul.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he had lashed out in his pain and had killed his dear Carlos. It wasn’t fair that Carlos had been the one to go. He had been right, he was the only one Cecil would have fought that hard for. There was no one like Carlos in the world.
And now there wasn’t even him.