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Roier is pretty sure Bobby will be fine. Pretty sure, not completely, kind of concerned but not too worried. It’s Bobby, he thinks. Surely he’ll be okay. Surely Roier will wake up tomorrow, thinking it was all just a nightmare. Will wake up knowing that his son is safe in his bed, that his body isn’t lying bleeding on the floor, slaughtered by a fucking Vindicator while Roier was helpless to do anything.
Bobby will be fine. That’s what he tells himself, that’s what he tells Jaiden, that’s what he tells Cellbit and Richarlyson and Max and Bad and everyone who stops by to ask how he’s doing.
Because he’s fine, too. Or he will be, whenever Bobby wakes up from his nightmare. Anytime now, the Federation will send him a message, or Cucurucho’s goofy face will show up to tell him they can go get Bobby from the adoption center, maybe, or maybe that Federation hospital Max started talking about this morning. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe turns into I don’t know turns into where is he turns into I’ll do anything. Turns into running eight thousand blocks and fighting through that same fucking dungeon, everyone on the island helping them make it there and get through it one more time, turns into quiet acceptance at being given ten minutes. He shoots a glare at Cellbit and anyone else who dares to protest– he’ll take ten minutes, he’ll take anything, just to see Bobby one more time. He’ll take it, he’ll swallow down every ounce of his fury, and he’ll paint with his son and his partner one more time. He’ll tell Bobby that he’s not coming home, he’ll tell him himself, because that’s what dads do. And Roier, until his last breath, will always be a dad. No matter the fact that his son is no longer breathing.
He promises Bobby a city, because he’ll do anything. He promises to never forget him, to think of him with every sunrise. Because he’ll do anything for his son. Because he’s a good dad.
And he follows through. He builds Bobby his city, cardboard cutouts and goofy advertisements and stores that everyone on the island wanders through to laugh at. They’re funny, Roier will agree. He’s a funny guy. But he also keeps his promises. He greets every sunrise, even when he’s furious, swearing at the big ball of gas in the sky that reminds him now, every day, of his son, how brave and beautiful and stupid he was. How young.
Roier spends every waking moment angry to his core. Sad, absolutely, but angry, too. It’s burned into him, now, a kind of fury that sticks to your soul and never lets go. The kind of angry that other people are scared of. He’s pretty sure some people are scared of him, even when he’s acting silly, doing his funny guy thing. He’s pretty sure it scares them worse, actually, when he’s the funny guy. At least when he’s angry or upset they know how he’s feeling.
Sometimes someone slips up and says that Bobby died from neglect, or bad parenting, or because people didn’t care so much back then. Roier wants to scream from the top of the Oxxo, at that. As if he didn’t care when Slime cut down Tilín. As if he never cared about JuanaFlippa. As if he just let Bobby die, ignored his desperate pounding on the dungeon floor. Sure. They all died from neglect. No one cared. The only people on this island who give a shit about the eggs are the ones still around. Let them all believe that.
Roier still feels like he’s trapped in that moment, forever lying on the floor with an axe at his neck, listening to the sick squelch of his son’s body falling to one on the other side of the wall. Always, he’s in the middle of knowing his son is going to die, that his son is dead. He can’t forget it. So when someone says that it’s his fault, that he didn’t protect his son, that they all know better now. Well. He wishes he could show them a playback, let them listen to that axe hitting the floor over and over. Let them call him a bad parent after that.
Roier doesn’t bother to show people that, though. What the fuck is anyone else’s opinion worth? He can scream until his face is blue that he was a good dad, that Bobby was the happiest egg, the safest, the strongest. That doesn’t matter, not anymore. People will believe what they want to believe, and Roier will go on living his life.
It doesn’t become easier with time. It does, in a way, because there’s less reminders, but also it doesn’t. Everything is nothing is everything. His son is dead, but he’s alive, because he was, once, so he still is. But also he’s dead. Very dead.
He dreams, even when he’s awake, of killing Cucurucho. With his bare hands, maybe, or with an axe to the throat, into its artificial skull, cracking it open like an egg. No yoke inside, though. Only recorded phrases, robotic politeness, no apologies, no consideration. Nothing to even be angry over, honestly, Roier, what could possibly upset someone about this fluffy white bear? All he does is blow bubbles and kidnap people, honestly. Honestly, man, what is there even to be mad about?
Roier talks to himself constantly. He did it long before Bobby, still does it, a habit he’ll never break because he sees no reason to. Words spill out of him like a fountain, like the fake piss he funnels through the statue of Bobby in his yard. Just as useless, most of the time, but he keeps it running, a stream that never runs out. Bobby died, but piss is eternal. That’s the lesson to learn.
Someone asked him, once, what stage of grief he was in. If he’d reached bargaining yet.
“Shit, man,” he’d said. “I was bargaining the day he died.”
‘There’s no such thing as stages of grief, you fucking idiot,’ is what he wanted to say.
If he could go back in time, he wouldn’t do anything. What could he do, anyway– Bobby made his choice. He’d probably make it again, over and over, just to torment Roier, put him through hell. Just to show that he didn’t care about him enough.
Roier knows that’s not true, knows that Bobby was young and stupid and wanted to play, wanted so badly to be like him, wanted to be a big kid, a grown man already. But he told Bobby what it meant to choose that dungeon, and he picked it over Roier. Roier will never make that same choice. Anything, he promised. Anything, anything, and Roier will be fine. He’s always fine.