Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jaiden started noticing a few new grey hairs here and there soon after Cucurucho started giving her tasks. She chalked them up to stress - she was grieving her son, after all -  and tried to forget the shock of white in Cellbit’s bangs. She ignored the fact that they seemed to appear, fully formed, overnight, and further ignored the occasional malformed or miscolored feather growing in because obviously it was the fact that she wasn’t taking the best care grooming them. No other reason. 

She was waking up tired and sore more often. She would drag herself back to the Wall to visit people and feel foggy, disconnected. Roier and Cellbit were wrapped up in their own soap opera of a relationship, and she was happy as long as Roier was happy, but she was happiest to play a supporting role. She would make her best effort to be social with the community - and she really did love hanging out with everyone, honest - but it was so emotionally draining. And more often, these days, she was just tired. 

And then, one night, she dreams of fire.

–

It takes several days for the residents of the island to realize that Jaiden is missing, and not just being reclusive. 

Roier is the first one to get worried when she stops responding to text messages, and he goes from person to person on the island asking who’s seen her the most recently. Everyone has similar answers - saw her like a week ago, messaged with her a day or two after that, then nothing. Nor is she staying in the house they previously shared in front of Bobby Castle. 

So, exhausting the search around the Wall, he goes to her house in the red rose fields. Or, what used to be her house in the red rose fields.

He cannot give words to how much pain and dread he feels when see the state of Jaiden’s house, or the burnt out surrounding field that his family had spent such a happy time before. The beautiful home she had spent so much time on, the treehouse lookout at the top of the hill - everything was burnt out and destroyed, extending out a hundred blocks or more.

Whatever fire had been lit here, it had been out for days at this point. Roier swears at his surroundings, and messages his husband. 

-

[iRoier msg Cellbit] warp to jaiden house

[iRoier msg Cellbit] rapidamente

The message comes as Cellbit is at Philza’s house atop the Wall. Chayanne is showing off his new kitchen to Richarlyson; Tallulah keeps a running commentary on their antics with her abuelito, and he and Phil are making a deal for a bottle of black nail polish. 

He reads the message out under his breath. Phil and Tallulah tilt their heads at him, perfectly in sync. Phil reads the concern in his face immediately. “Everything alright?”

Cellbit meets his eyes. “I’m not sure. Roier wants to meet me at Jaiden’s place.” He shoots off a quick reply. 

[Cellbit msg iRoier] Estas bien?

Philza’s enormous wings shuffled uneasily, folded tightly under the slightly low ceiling of the bunker in the Wall. His stance changed from relaxed and easy to tense, ready to take flight at any moment, despite the ceiling and the reinforced double-paned windows.  “Can’t be good news, I take it?”

Roier’s reply is a nonsensical string of curses. He doesn’t give any additional information, but it’s enough raw emotion to tell that he’s legitimately distressed and not trying to pull some kind of troll. “I think it’s bad,” he says to Phil, “Can I leave Richas with you for a bit? He might be safer here. I don’t know what I’m walking into.”

Philza says “Of course” at the same time that Richarlyson turns around with the angriest pout Cellbit has seen from him in a while. 

“Richas, please, you’ll have so much fun with Chayanne and Tallulah. I shouldn't be gone long.”

Richarlyson continues to pout, but he seems resigned enough to go back to chattering with Chayanne, the two signing at lightning speed in the background. Tallulah, meanwhile, tugs at Cellbit’s sleeve and passes him a note.

‘Please be safe, Tio.’

She looks so concerned. Cellbit kneels down to her level and looks her in the eye. “I’m always careful, Tallulah,” he reassures, “Will you make sure Richas doesn’t  run Philza ragged for me?” Tallulah smiles, nods with determination, and throws her arms around Cellbit’s neck in a big hug. Despite not being a hug guy, he returns it earnestly. 

Cellbit warps away directly in a puff of purple particulate, and Phil starts sizing up the windows with a furrowed brow, thinking about putting up blinds. 

-

Jaiden finds herself in a dark room, made of white quartz. The overall effect reminds her of snow at night. It’s certainly chilly enough. She doesn’t remember how she got here, and there are no doors or windows to provide a clue. In fact, the room is entirely featureless except for one dim, inset light in the ceiling - the only light source. 

All of her gear is gone. She’s wearing a white jumpsuit. Her wings are bound, folded and pinned uncomfortably together so she can’t extend them, so that’s an extra layer of trapped that she’s not enjoying.

Good morning.

The voice comes from nowhere, and everywhere, directionless. She whips around, trying to find a corner Cucurucho could be hiding in. 

What are you doing. 

It’s not a question, so she doesn’t bother answering. She turns around again. Still nobody. She can feel her breath starting to catch. “Where are we?”

We are part of the QSMP Census Bureau.

-

Cellbit picks through the debris carefully and comes up with little, except for a few discarded feathers. They’re clearly Jaiden’s, based on the coloration - he wasn't familiar with any wild animals with deep purple in the color scheme - but one of them looks wrong. He’s not an expert on feathers, but this one looks… malformed, somehow, like it wasn’t allowed to grow properly, and there are spots on it devoid of color. 

He frowns. The platinum streak in his own hair is hanging in front of his face. He looks between them, not liking the conclusions he’s drawing. He stands back up in the ruins of the lower house just as Roier glides down from the top of the hill. 

“There’s nothing left,” his Guapito says. His eyes are red, but if he has shed any tears, they’re long gone by now. “The whole treehouse is gone. Ashes.” He’s holding the remains of a few small, bright blue flowers that Cellbit remembers were planted by the sunset lookout. “Did you find anything, gatinho?”

He holds up the fucked-up feather next to his face. “Just a few of these.”

Roier stiffens. He’s drawn the same conclusion Cellbit has. “Oh, shit. What the fuck?”

“Did she say anything to you about it?” Cellbit asks. She hadn’t mentioned anything to him, but she was Roier’s partner long before Cellbit had met them. 

“No, nada. She’s been keeping to herself for a while.” It’s common knowledge that Jaiden has become more of a recluse since Bobby’s death. She always made the excuse that she was busy, building her own home, and it wasn’t a lie - Roier and Cellbit were both witnesses to the herculean amount of effort and detail she had put into her hideaway, and Cellbit could say for himself that he was genuinely honored when she trusted him enough to visit. 

In the whole wreckage, there were no notes left, no ransom to pay, nothing. Not even a real sign of struggle, if he was honest. Any footprints left had been confused by curious animal tracks and the wreckage of burnt timber. No evidence aside from the feathers. 

Roier wanders, moving pieces of debris, climbing over what used to be a load-bearing beam. He finds a few shreds of canvas, hundreds and hundreds of dead plants, the remains of an easel. An item frame. 

He shoves aside an armor stand and a charred sombrero, looking for clues, when he finds the gun in a pile of things that must have fallen off the wall. He’s not sure where Jaiden got it from, surely it can’t be Bobby’s, they’ve been banned for a while, but suddenly he feels like he’s been given a gift from a higher power. 

He clears the weapon, checks it for function. It needs to be cleaned, but by some miracle it’s not damaged. There’s no ammunition with it; the clip is empty, nothing in the chamber, none in the debris when he looks.

He thinks about Cellbit. His discolored streak of hair. Jaiden’s feathers. Cucurucho. The damn bear had to have something to do with this. He mulls over the weapon in his hand, so rare in the hands of the residents now. 

The Federation employees had access to them.

“Cellbo,” he calls to his husband, “What do you say we make a bear trap?”

Chapter Text

The plan begins to take shape like this:

They're going to use Forever’s base, because nobody is able to warp away, so theoretically Cucurucho shouldn’t either, and the short version is that someone is going to have to be the bait while someone outside traps him with reinforced materials. 

There are several volunteers for the vulnerable position of bait. Cellbit insists he still has an unsettled score about a chainsaw; Bad thinks that’s a terrible idea, Cellbit will probably scare the muffins out of the bear, there’s no way they’d get them in a room together voluntarily. Philza offers the several illegal items he’s hoarded - not to use, just because they’re shiny and neat - to lure Cucurucho out; Fit thinks it would be way fuckin’ funnier to grief the Federation building with with watermelons like he’s done a couple times with the church. The conversation goes round and round for an hour.

Roier thinks about the gun in his back pocket and wishes, again, that he’d found bullets. He remembers that time, so long ago, that he’d threatened Slime when he was going after the kids. He thinks back to what he’d said to Jaiden that day, to try to reassure her. Among other things, he’d called himself a “professional Mexican” as a tongue in cheek sort of joke, a kind of confidence smokescreen to mask how he was nervous and angry about the threat to his son’s life. Indulging himself, he imagines how Slime’s face looked when he’d pulled the firearm on the bastard. Then he replaces the face with the stupid white bear face and imagines putting two in his stupid skull. Then again, and again. 

He doesn’t realize he’s totally zoned out until Cellbit puts a hand on his back, returning him to reality. He’s been digging a gouge into the meeting table with the nail of his index finger. 

Roier does his best to tune back into the conversation without making it obvious that he’s been off in his own head for who knows how long. 

“-can’t kill him, we need him for leverage! We can use him as a hostage!” Bad pounds the table like a punctuation mark. 

Across the table, Phil laughs, “We absolutely can, are you kidding?” Roier doesn’t know Philza very well, but he usually has the impression of him as a positive influence in the lives of everyone. This person sitting at one corner of the table, leaning back casually in his chair like he’s just deciding what to have for breakfast, feels different. He casts a shadow in the corner larger than he should.

Forever, who has been uncharacteristically quiet, decides to speak up finally. “Thats fine, to kill Cucurucho or no, but we don’t even know if it’s responsible? Anything could have happened, and the Federation have never burned a house before.”

“What, you don’t think the Federation is involved?” Bad questions.

“Obviously I do, but do we think Cucurucho did this?”

“It doesn’t matter if Cucurucho dragged her off and burned the house himself, he knows something about it-”

Roier puts his head down on the table and lets the arguing fly over his head. 

-

Jaiden has, at this point, gone so  far past climbing the walls that she’s circled back to sitting in the exact center of the room, as far from any wall as possible. There is no passage of time to keep, no apparent day or night cycle, nothing changes. The room is just wide enough so there’s no way of her bracing herself between the walls; if she could extend her wings, she thinks she could maybe, probably brush wingtips to the opposite corners. 

Good morning. What are you doing. 

The Cucurucho voice is back. She knew it would be, eventually. She ignores it. 

Answer the question. 

“Nothing!” Oh, she’s back to shouting. Jaiden wasn’t sure she had any shouting left in her body. “I’m doing nothing!”

Yes. 

Jaiden has the sudden, violent urge to throw something. Anything, just something that would shatter against the wall. What was the point of all this anyway? Nothing had happened. Nothing was the only thing happening, and as far as she could figure out, nothing was going to keep happening, interspersed with occasional bouts of Cucurucho voice. 

“What do you want? I did everything you asked.” She stops shouting, now, because her throat is already raw and there’s no use making it worse. 

Yes. No. Maybe.

She doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. She doesn’t bother to try to analyze from her position in the middle of the room. Cucurucho doesn’t seem to have anything else to say at the moment. 

The lightbulb is flickering. If she counts the flickers, maybe she can figure out how long she’s been here.

-

Several hours after the meeting had broken up without a truly actionable plan in place, BadBoyHalo is practicing his lasso technique on the beach and thinking. Dapper has already been put to bed, safe and sound, and he assumes most of the other kids have as well. He’s ruminating on the whole abduction thing - why now, what are they planning to do with Jaiden, will they be holding her in the last place they were holding Cellbit and Felps? He doesn’t think so, but it’s probably worth it to check - when Forever approaches from behind with a cup of coffee from the Starbobby cafe. 

Bad stops flinging the lasso over the water long enough to take the coffee. The first sip is just lovely, and he takes just a minute to savor the caffeine hit before looking back at Forever. “Thanks for the coffee. How are you doing?”

Forever rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, sighing. “I will be honest, badboy, I am having a hard time staying awake. How are you doing it?”

Bad takes another long swig of his coffee. “This helps. Also, the worrying. There’s a lot of thinking going on. And planning? So many ideas, it’s hard to get them all straight. I need one of those red string cork boards.” Forever nods along, staring off towards the horizon, clearly distracted. “Forever? Everything okay with you?”

“Yes, I am just thinking…” he trails off, trying to find the right way to form the question delicately. “Do we know that Jaiden didn’t just leave by herself?”

“What? Of course she didn’t. Why would she do that?” Of all the possibilities running through his mind, that one hadn’t come up. 

“It’s just… she has been really private lately! Maybe she was unhappy and went somewhere?” The blonde shrugs, at a loss for what else to say. “I don't know, man, there is just something bothering me about it.”

Bad takes another sip and really studies Forever for a moment, considering the implications. “Or,” he begins, slowly, “Maybe they wanted to make it look that way?”

“Maybe.” Forever sighs. “Ah, we are two smart people among many, right? We can get Baghera in on it also. Then we will for sure solve this… tomorrow. Tonight, I am too tired. Badboy, you should get some sleep as well.”

Forever turns to go, and Bad finds himself staring after him a little too long.

Chapter Text

Jaiden has started talking to herself to lift the boredom. It’s not working very well.

She starts reciting poems to amuse herself. Then she moves on to songs she remembers, or makes up the lyrics she doesn’t know, or just whistles. This goes on for hours, surely, maybe days. She realizes, after a long while of this, that she probably hasn’t eaten or slept in days. It’s a concerning realization. Or, it should be. The memory of concern is suddenly incredibly fuzzy.

Maybe she should be more concerned about that too. And she is! Iit's just… a lot of effort. 

There is the sound of some sort of plate sliding, and a thin slot opens in a wall. A slip of paper slides out and floats to the ground, followed by a pen. It feels like an eternity before she can move her limbs enough to crawl across the floor, joints stiff from… how long has she been sitting in the middle of the room again?

The single light source in the room is just bright enough 

What was your name?

Where did you live

What was your favorite memory?

What made you happy?

Who was the person you loved the most?

She’s pretty sure this is the same survey that she got on her first day. There is a dim sense of alarm, that she’s missing something ominous. 

Answer the question, Cucurucho says from nowhere. She picks up the pen - that is still a perfect instinct honed from years of use - and begins to write, propping the slip of paper against the wall. 

The first question is easy. The second gives her pause. She lives on the island, but before…? She pushes the question out of her mind. Favorite memory is definitely the rose fields. Her family makes her happy. She loves her son. She finishes the form and shoves it back through the slot and, task accomplished, she returns to the center of the room. 

There is a deep unsettlement in her bones, a sensation that she should be more upset than she is. Instead, she goes back to counting the flickers of the single light fixture. It gives her something to focus on. 

-

Cellbit wakes alone in his bed at dawn. The sun is just starting to peek into the castle in places, morning birds are just starting to sing, and the place where his husband should have been is still warm. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, just enough to open them, and finds his son and his husband sitting on the balcony enjoying the morning air. They’re having breakfast, Richarlyson signing at Roier with excitement, Roier laughing at whatever antics Richas is explaining. 

His heart swells, and for a moment he forgets the drama of the recent weeks. Roier looks over and smiles that big, bright smile. The moment is only broken when Richarlyson divebombs the bed, landing an elbow into his stomach and knocking the wind out of him, and the family dissolves into laughter. 

At the same time, the speaker block at the entrance to the castle goes off twice, alerting the family to visitors, and based on the voice calling for the residents Cellbit thinks it’s probably Bad and Dapper, so he crawls out of bed despite the protests of his son and pulls on a shirt to make himself at least somewhat presentable.  

They meet in the dining room. Dapper is jumping around excitedly, and he and Richarlyson immediately tackle each other. “Hey, hey, Dapper! Richar! Be nice to each other, no hitting -” Bad tries to break the kids’ mock fight up, but they giggle and escape under the table and into one of the adjoining rooms. “Aww, jeez, kids. Sorry to bother you guys, but you weren’t answering your messages.”

“It’s no problem. It’s good to see you.” Cellbit notices that he’s fidgeting with something in his pocket, eyes shifting around the room, seemingly looking for dust in the sunbeams. Something is occupying his thoughts, worrying him. He can almost see him sweat beneath the overshadow of his hood. “Is everything alright?”

“Um. Yeah, it’s all good. I just wanted to chat about something.” He looks off in the direction the kids disappeared, then whispers, “I don’t wanna upset the kids, but I’m worried. I found something.”

“What is it?” Roier and Cellbit ask, perfectly in sync. 

Bad surveys the room again, sighs, then pulls something out of his pocket and holds it close to his body. Or, two somethings. The first is a piece of paper with a set of coordinates on it and an ominous smiley face. “I found this tacked to the bulletin board at the Spawn transit hub. Then I found this kicked into a corner.” The second item is a white feather. It could almost be a chicken feather if it wasn’t itself the size of a chicken, beak to tail. 

Roier stills, inhales through his teeth. “No mames…”

Bad turns the feather in the light. Near the base, a faded trace of violet remains. 

Cellbit pulls the messed-up feather from Jaiden’s house from his inventory and holds it up to compare. They’re probably meant to be different kinds of feathers, but the one Cellbit is holding looks… before he thought it had maybe been injured or not made right, but now he almost thinks it looks unfinished. 

“What the fuck they do to her,” Roier mutters under his breath. “Where does the note lead?”

“Southwest, somewhere. It’s not in a mapped area. Think it’s a base?”

“I think it’s whatever the Federation want us to find,” Cellbit says. 

“We should go.” Roier says flatly. “Now. We don’t have time to waste.” He takes the feathers from Cellbit and Bad, holding one in each hand. The quiet rage is starting to come back to him. Whatever the Federation has done to Jaiden, he is going to enact such violence-

He is shaken out of his thoughts by Cellbit taking his hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing. His husband gives him a knowing glance, reading his mind. They’ve had late night conversations, after Richarlyson safely asleep or with one of his other dads, about his anxieties over his best friend’s disappearance. 

“I’m gonna go gather everyone who’s available and let them know what’s going on,” Bad continues, “Should we have people meet up at the Favela? You’re right, we should do this raid ASAP.”

-

The rescue party ends up being most of the residents, but the forward team is Phil, Etoiles, Bad, and the husbands, all armed to the teeth with totems and enchantments. The dungeon goes deep - floor after floor of enemies, getting more difficult as they go deeper. Etoiles is having the time of his life, despite himself, he and Cellbit checking every door, every chest and barrel, taking pictures. Phil insists on being on torch duty, making sure the spawners are well and truly destroyed, keeping the spawn rate down for the second team to come behind them and clean up the stragglers. Bad, armloads of totems in hand, keeps the aggressive enemies focused on himself so that the party can operate with limited obstruction. Roier has less of a plan than an objective; destroy mobs, find Jaiden, get the fuck out of here.

Etoiles is the first to reach the cell block at the bottom of the dungeon. He nearly skids to a stop in front of the only locked door. There’s a banging coming from inside, muffled shouting, and …flapping sounds?

Roier catches his breath. His partner. How long has she been confined, ten levels underground? He cracks the lock, rips the door open, and Quackity - regular Quackity, in his track jacket instead of the suspenders - falls through the door, duck wings fluttering madly, and falls face first to the ground.

Philza is the first to lower his weapon. “Quackity? Holy shit, mate, you alright?”

Quackity takes a moment to pick himself up off the floor, before he turns and frowns at his rescuers. “Fuckin’ took you people long enough, can we get out of here?”

Chapter Text

The light in Jaiden’s cell has long died out. Jaiden can no longer feel the difference between her skin and the floor. 

-

The forward team stands stunned in silence. Quackity still has that stupid fucking grimace on his face, everyone is just standing there stupid, and Roier feels that cold rage that’s been sitting in his stomach for weeks turn raging hot like he’s just swallowed lighter fluid. This stupid motherfucker. Everything is dumb, and he hates it. It was supposed to be Jaiden here, not this - this stupid-!

Consumed in a flash by his frustration and rage, Roier rushes forward, grabs Quackity by the collar and slams him into the wall. Quackity’s skull collides with the wall in a sickening crack. His eyes roll as he tries to blink back into focus, head lolling to one side. Roier gets up in his face, close enough to blow the stray hairs out of Quackity’s face if he wanted to. 

“ ¿ Donde esta Jaiden, pendejo? ” he whispers. Later, when he mulls over the incident, he’ll be proud of the sheer malice he put into the question.

Quackity spits in his face. “Vete a la mierda.”

Roier lets him go for just a moment. Just long enough for him to adjust his fist, let Quackity stand up on his own two feet. Give him just enough space that he relaxes. Then he winds back and punches Quackity square in the nose. He feels the nose break under his knuckle, hears the high-pitched shriek, and the fire in the pit of his stomach settles a bit. He lets Phil and Cellbit pull him away, putting bodies and distance between them. 

He hears the pop of a cork, the gurgle of a potion vial emptying, and the subtle crunch of Quackity’s nose moving itself back into place. Phil and Bad are tending to him, holding him steady, while Cellbit and Etoiles are standing in front of Roier. Cellbit is holding his hand, examining the bruise that’s barely starting on his knuckles. 

“You didn’t break your thumb. Good,” He mumbles. He doesn’t judge, doesn’t chastise him, merely presses a kiss to Roier’s bruised knuckles. 

“We should go home,” Roier says under his breath. The last heat of rage leaves him, leaving a pit of despair where it had burned. If Jaiden wasn’t here, where was she? Why had the Federation left a feather and coordinates if not to find her there?

-

Cellbit and Roier warp away without a word, just as more people from the second party start to reach the cell block. Fit enters first, followed by Baghera and the TazerCraft guys. 

“What the hell happened to you, Quackity?” Fit asks. Then, with a little theatrics, he adds, “If that is your real name!” and laughs to himself. There’s a couple of nervous giggles around the room, but that’s all the acknowledgement he gets.

Quackity scowls, indignant.  “I was kidnapped, asshole, I’m not a fucking supervillian.”

“Okay, but where have you been ?”

Quackity shrugs, scratches the back of his head. He’s missing his beanie, and clearly feeling exposed without it. “They had me in cold storage until like three days ago. I have no idea how long I’ve been gone, but they got me right after the wedding.”

Baghera and Bad look between each other, frowning. “That’s been over a month,” Bad says. His voice drops, like he’s talking to himself more than anyone in the room, bright eyes scrutinizing from under the shadow of his hood. “You’ve missed a lot.”

“RIght. Like why is Roier so pissed off about Jaiden that he breaks my nose?”

“She’s missing. Her home was burned to the ground, probably about ten days ago.”

Quackity furrows his brow but says nothing.

“What?”

“Nothing. I dunno what you’re talking about.”

Baghera stomps her foot and pushes her way to the front of the back to stand in front of Quackity, feathers fluffing with her frustration. “No, I cannot take this any more, you stupid boys and your not answering things! You-” she points at Quackity, “Why do you have this look on your face about Jaiden?” 

Behind her, at the back of the pack, Bad has the sudden urge to flinch.

Quackity steps back, hands up in submission. “I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“Yes! Yes you do!” Baghera pokes him in the sternum. “You are looking like you are confused, or upset! Do you think we should have found you sooner? This is the first clue we have had, and it had Jaiden’s feather with it! So what, I beg, do you know?” 

There is a still silence as the duckfolk stare each other down. It’s enough that even Phil’s feathers are standing on end, even as he’s backed nearly out of the room, and there’s a lack of will for anyone to be the one to break it first. 

Everyone in the room is looking at Quackity as his expression changes - shock, confusion, the dawn of understanding, finally landing on frustration. “Oh. I guess you guys don’t know, do you?” He says quietly, near a whisper.

“Know what?” nearly every person in the room says at the same time.

He sighs, the last vestiges of upset leaving his body with his breath. “I’d tell you to sit down, but there’s nowhere to sit, so…” Quackity fiddles with hair, tucks a greasy strand behind his ear. He needs a shower when they get out of here, the Feds haven’t given him the opportunity since they thawed him out. “There’s not a good way to put this. Jaiden’s been here. Walking around, freely, I think.”

There’s a quiet gasp in the back of the room as Bad puts it together. “No fudging way. Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure, that’s why I didn’t want to say anything!” 

“What,” Fit says, loudly, “are you two talking about? Complete sentences, please.”

Bad pulls the feather from Spawn out of his pockets, holding it out for everyone else to see. “They’ve had her long enough to completely alter the pigmentation of her feathers - longer than she’s been missing. This has been in the works for a while.”

The implications start to dawn on the rest of the group. Several sets of eyes start flicking between Bad and Quackity. Nobody wants to speak it into existence, as if acknowledging it will make it more real. 

Except Phil, who doesn’t like getting involved, but knew that he had to confirm  the suspicions he had, and now that he has done he’s practically screaming to return to his home, his nest, to protect the hatchlings from this new danger. “They’ve made her one of them.”

-

A29 approaches the house in front of Bobby Castle and begins its good work.

Chapter Text

Chayanne has everything under control!

Okay, that might be an overstatement. Really, his papa has everything under control. He’s really good at building secure structures! Like the kitchen, where he was currently hosting a dinner party with all his siblings, plus Tio Forever. There’s brand new blinds on the windows so they can have some privacy if some dumb code monster decides to creep on them, and the double-thick reinforcement everywhere will keep them nice and protected. 

Nevertheless, Chayanne keeps his weapon close while he’s working in his kitchen. He’s the oldest, it’s his job.

Forever is the trusted adult charged with Hitting The Panic Button if things take a weird turn for some reason, and also Being In Charge. Right now, Being In Charge means having the girls braid flowers into his hair while the triplets and Richarlyson are arguing about something. He doesn’t know what, because he mostly has his eyes on his work, but he can hear the rustling of fabric and the occasional slap of one of them interrupting another as they sign back and forth at warp speed. 

Dinner. Chayanne has dinner under control. A  fantastic cobb salad, because he knows some of his siblings haven’t been eating their veggies, and he needs to find a use for all these avocados they have laying around but Tallulah refuses to eat the avocado toast as anything but a last resort. Papa loves avocado toast. 

He’s worried about his papa. Papa Phil is normally pretty careful, but he knows Chayanne is good at dungeons. So are some of his siblings. The fact that all the parents made the decision that the kids should stay at Phil’s house and not go with them to this mysterious dungeon is weird, and everyone knows it. He tried to ask Tio Forever about it after the party left; the man just laughed and told him not to worry so much. Chayanne knew he probably wouldn’t get anything out of him, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it. He knows when people are keeping things from him, and Forever is acting shifty. 

Tallulah and Pomme finish Forever’s hair just as Chayanne starts bringing the bowls out to the table. They’ve given him two dutch-style braids, tucking flowers in every space they can, and Forever is busy praising their handiwork when his communicator vibrates where he’s set it on the table. It’s a private message from Cellbit, but Chayanne hasn’t learned enough Portuguese to understand what it says. A status update, maybe?

Chayanne fights the urge to steal Forever’s phone from the table while he’s distracted. He’s not Tio Bad, he’s better than that. 

Slowly, the rest of the siblings stop bouncing off the walls of the kitchen and come to the table. Richas is nearly ready to fight for a spot next to his dad before Tallulah offers her spot to him. Another message comes through for Forever most of the way through dinner; this one he notices. He picks the phone up and reads it after shoving a forkful of salad into his mouth, and stops chewing mid-bite once he apparently processes whatever the messages. 

He’s really terrible at hiding things like surprise, Chayanne has noticed. 

Forever chokes down the last of his bite of salad, coughs, tries to school his face into a happy expression, pretending like nothing is wrong. “Good news, kids,” he says, “Your parents are coming home! They finished with the dungeon!”

There’s a series of happy bounces and instrument sounds from most of the kids gathered. Dapper catches Chayanne’s eye from across the table. He signs, gestures small and guarded, ‘something is wrong but he’s not saying it’. Chayanne nods back, giving Dapper a meaningful look, then picks up his half-finished food and heads to the kitchen. 

Dapper follows suit immediately. Chayanne makes a big show of enlisting Dapper’s help getting the dishes done; The sink faces away from the table, making it a great place to have a private conversation. 

‘I didn’t think the adults would be coming back this soon. What do you think this means?’ Dapper’s signing is best described as sharp and precise; where Chayanne tends to gesture wildly in regular conversation, Dapper keeps his hands - and his thoughts - close to his chest.

Chayanne shrugs, then responds with quiet hands, ‘I don’t like the look he had when he read that message. You don’t read Portuguese, do you?’

Dapper shakes his head. ‘Richarlyson does.’

‘Obviously.’

‘We should at least ask him.’

Chayanne shrugs again, ‘Maybe, but how will he get the phone away from his dad long enough to read it?’

Dapper doesn’t respond for a good minute, ‘Maybe we ask him tonight and try to meet up about it tomorrow?’

They look back at the group at the same time. Forever is trying to get Richarlyson to finish one last bite of green vegetables; Tallulah and Ramon are starting to clear the table, gathering empty bowls and forks from their siblings. Most of the other kids are engaged in conversation of their own. None seem to have clocked the poorly hidden flash of concern that Chayanne and Dapper picked up on, least of all Richas.

Chayanne turns back to Dapper, frowning. ‘Maybe we just ask our dads about it when they get home and compare notes in the morning. I’m sure Tio Bad will tell you something.’

Dapper nods in agreement. ‘I’ll try, but he can really weasel his way out of answering questions he doesn’t like.’

By the time Talluah and Ramon come by with the rest of the dishes, Chayanne has resolved not to share his worries with anyone else. There’s no use worrying anyone about it, and it’s Chayanne’s responsibility, being the oldest, to take care of his siblings, which as far as he’s concerned includes not stressing them out with something that could, feasibly, be nothing at all. 

He’s strong. He’s got this. 

Later, Philza is the first parent through the doors. He creeps through, opening the doors slowly and making sure to keep them from slamming shut. Forever is sitting at the table, head propped up in one hand, eyes flicking between his phone screen and the pile of kids and blankets that have finally fallen asleep in a pile. 

Forever jumps when Phil puts a hand on his shoulder, then relaxes. “Oh, sorry Phil. I didn’t hear you come in,” He whispers, bleary-eyed and a tinge embarrassed. “I must be too sleepy.”

Phil shrugs. “It’s fine. Sorry it took so long. How were the kids?”

“They’re perfect. They just settled down, maybe twenty minutes?” Forever leans back in the chair, searching Philza’s face for something like signs or scars from the night. “Everything was perfect here. I heard the dungeon didn’t end so good?”

Phil finally sinks into the chair next to him, removes his hat. It’s ended up with some stains from some splash of monster viscera, and he idly thinks that he really should wash the damn thing when he remembers. “I assume Cellbit let you know who we found at the bottom of that dungeon. I imagine Felps probably has some thoughts as well.” 

They sit in silence for a moment. Phil is just a little sore from the dungeon, and there’s a few scrapes he should probably take care of at some point, but for now he just doesn’t want to wake the kids when they’re sleeping so peacefully. Or mostly peacefully, anyway - one of the kids rolls away when another kicks them in their sleep, causing some disturbance, but not enough to truly wake them. 

“Thank you for taking care of the kids, Forever,” Phil finally says after a moment. “Really. I know the other parents will tell you as well, but it means a lot." 

“Of course, it’s no problem, Philza. Thank you for letting us use your base, it’s probably better than keeping the kids in separate rooms in the NINHO for hours?”

“Yeah, I know they would all hate that.”

Their communicators both buzz in unison. Forever and Phil look at each other, then at Forever’s screen sitting on the table.

[FitMC] Hey, not to alarm anyone but uh 

[FitMC] were we not expecting Roier and Jaiden’s old house to burn down tonight or am I just out of the loop?

Chapter Text

Fit has a couple of things he wants to do before he picks up his Beautiful Baby Boy Made In Heaven By God Himself from Phil’s place, but he gets to do exactly none of them before he sees the flames licking the roof of a house west of the Wall. He can actually see the glow over the hill and across the water from the Gym, and he knows what a house fire looks like, so he grabs a couple buckets of water before he heads over. This isn’t the Wastelands, people give a shit about other people’s buildings here.

He stops at the top of the hill when he sees which house is on fire. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that it’s Roier and Jaiden’s old place, even if neither of them really live there any more. He shoots off a couple of messages to the global chat to alert the rest of the residents, trying to keep a little bit of levity because what else are you gonna do in a situation like this?

The responses come flooding back; As Fit suspected, nobody was expecting any light arson tonight. He starts over toward the structure, trying to decide the best way to get to the roof and attempt to put out the fire before it starts spreading to the surrounding area. He supposes he should be thankful the house is built on a riverbank; makes it easy to refill. 

He starts putting out fires as he comes across them, circling the outside walls, and stops in his tracks as he comes around the north side of the house.

Standing under the gate of the castle wall, there is a figure in white, and at first Fit mistakes it for Cucurucho, but he stops before he calls the name. This one is wrong, Cucurucho doesn’t look like that. The mask and the outfit, while still in keeping with the general theme of the federation, differs. The jumpsuit is cut differently, the mask is wrong for Cucurucho. The way it stands at rest is wrong for the Cucurucho that he’s encountered before. 

It’s observing the fire, calmly, but it hasn’t acknowledged Fit’s presence yet. So he calls out to it.

“Hey, asshole!” He doesn’t have any more creative openers loaded up, so that’ll have to do.

The Cucurucho-like figure seems to look away from the fire, towards him. Then it turns and walks away from him, into the castle gates, and Fit sees the stark white wings folded up behind it, and the thoughts in Fit’s head click together. Of course. The mask isn’t a teddy bear, it’s a stylized bird mask. 

He abandons the structure fire, dropping the bucket in his hand in favor of fishing a camera out of his inventory. The new Cucurucho leads him into the courtyard of the castle. It’s only walking, but Fit can barely keep up enough to snap a picture or two when it turns to look over it’s shoulder at him, apparently to see if he’s following.

It turns a corner into a hallway. Fit follows; He loses sight of it around the corner, tries to run to catch up - damn, this new Cucurucho is fast as hell, he’s not a slow guy - and completely bowls Roier over coming ‘round another corner. They crash to the ground in a heap in the narrow hallway, both swearing in their native languages. He hears a warp activate - the one at the end of the hall, he forgot that was there, what a weird place for a warp point? - and footsteps approach. 

“Guapito, wait - Fit?” Cellbit slows his pace from the jog to help Roier up, then offers Fit a hand as well, still shedding the last few warp particles from his jacket. “What happened to the fire?” 

“Still burning,” he says. Fit looks back and forth down the hallway, reorienting from the spill he took. The stranger is nowhere in sight, apparently disappeared into thin air, not even the particulate of a warp stone activation left behind. “You guys didn’t see the new Fed?”

“The what?” Cellbit and Roier reply in unison. Then, Roier says “There was no one, I only have seen you?”

“No, there was just -” He pauses, starts the sentence over. “There was a federation worker watching the fire, kind of looked like Cucurucho but not?” He remembers the camera in his hand. It’s borrowed from Phil, the one that prints on regular paper instead of a canvas, intended to be used with Ramon for a project. Sure enough, there’s one mostly-unblurred picture of the new Cucurucho’s mask, almost turned towards the camera. 

: >

Definitely bird themed. Some kind of parakeet, maybe?

Cellbit inspects the photograph carefully. It’s blurry, but its a bit easier to tell now that the mask is accompanied by a hood, further masking any identifying features besides the ones the Federation absolutely cannot hide - the wings, too large to tuck under a jumpsuit, had clearly once been meant for flight. 

“It’s wings are bound.” Cellbit shows the photo to Roier, who squints and frowns. 

“Her,” Roier says flatly. “Es una mujer.”

“You think?” Fit asks, looking again.

“Si, mira-” He points at the picture, follows the curve of the jumpsuit. He’s not wrong, it’s a feminine sort of waist, but…

Fit shrugs, wondering aloud, “Are we even sure the Cucuruchos have genders?”

Cellbit doesn’t bother answering - the question is rhetorical, and so far down the list of priorities he doesn’t bother coming up with an answer. He tries to gently take the photograph back from Roier, but Guapito refuses to give the picture up. Roier is apparently enraptured by the picture, seeing something that Cellbit didn’t on first pass, that Fit had been too full of adrenaline to see when he took it in the first place. 

“Guapito?”

Roier swats his hands away, shooshes him. 

Fit interjects, “Hey, your house is probably still burning down -”

“Shh!” Roier worries his bottom lip, “I am thinking!”

Inside his head, Roier is pulling ideas together. He’s been foggy with the aftershock of anger, the pit of despair, since he and Cellbit left the dungeon for their castle. He’d fought, he’d begged, he’d cried in his husband’s arms over their failure to find Jaiden in that cellblock after the ten seconds of hope he’d held. The fact that Quackity had been the one inside had been so upsetting, even when he should be happy they’d found Actual Quackity after who knows how long?

The fact that it was another place where Jaiden had spent a lot of time that they had set fire to was absolutely not lost on him. What was the purpose? To erase her? Remove the things she cherished, the memories that her family cherished with her? They were his memories too, and she was too integrated into the lives of residents of the island to make everyone forget. 

He knew why she was special to him, to his family unit, but why was she important enough to take? To try to erase her fingerprints from their lives? 

Roier’s stomach turns, like someone has put their hand in his gut and twisted, as he traces the outline of the figure in the picture. Through the creeping tinnitus, he hears Fit say that he’s going to go try to save what’s left of the house. His vision tunnels until it is just the contrast of white against a night scene. The familiar curve of a shoulder, despite the jumpsuit designed to hide shape and form. The lay of the feathers, despite the color. The height of the figure, compared to the door. 

He feels the world spin. He wants to vomit where he stands. 

It’s not his Jaiden, but it is. Of course it is. Who else would it be?

Here, in the hallway by the waypoint in Bobby Castle, he wants to sink against his husband and cry for the second time this night.

Chapter Text

The first night after Bobby died, Roier and Jaiden spend the night in the beds by the window, clinging to each other like they could save each other from drowning, and cry each other to sleep. Anchors in a storm, as the grief ripped at the sails and threatened to dislodge them from the seafloor. The sun rises on the pair tangled together, clothes still dirty from the dungeon, Jaiden’s head tucked under Roier’s chin

Roier spends most of the day preening for her. They don't say a word - Jaiden, hunched over her crossed legs, wings limp, is dead to the world; Roier doesn't know what to do except to care for her. To straighten the feathers, lay them perfectly, cracking the keratin sheaths that are over-ready to come away, picking little sticks and loose downy fuzz. Brushing the knots out of her hair, past the hollow of her collarbone. He spends all his energy caring for her, because she can’t take care of herself, and because he can’t bear to give himself time to reflect on the past 48 hours or - he doesn’t know what he might do. It is easier for him to care for her than to care for himself. 

The neighbors come by with flowers, gifts, and more condolences for the grieving parents. The French even make an effort to come by, new as they are to their little island community. Neither Roier or Jaiden make good company for their visitors, so they are left to their own devices

She eventually starts sitting at the easel again. She sits for a long time, staring, letting paint dry on the palette. Roier takes a nap in the middle of the afternoon. He wakes up around sunset, and sees Jaiden at the frying pan, smells the food she’s cooking, but the canvas she had apparently been working on has been tossed, half-painted, in the corner. She looks up at him from the frying pan and smiles. It’s almost convincing, if not for the red of her eyes, and he almost-convincingly smiles back. 

Neither of them are okay. They understand each other. There is a hole stabbed through the canvas, through a half-finished sunset.

-

He returns to the present moment, down in the Ordo base again. 

He’s set the gun - Bobby’s gun - in front of him on the table. It’s still empty. He hopes the people sitting around the table will have ideas on how to fill it. How he fantasizes about walking into another memory, an earlier one, and plucking the bullets from a time several months ago and bringing them to the present. Granted, if he could do that, he probably would simply pick his son and bring him forward in time, too. 

How did it all come to this?

Like, he cannot imagine telling himself from a year ago that he’d adopt a kid with the one woman on the island that was intended to be a vacation home, lose the kid a month and a half later, then get married to someone entirely different? And now the government is kidnapping people that he loves? It is insane. 

Around him, the meeting room is bustling with adults and eggs alike. Cellbit is near the head of the table, talking to Quackity and a few other people. Quackity has managed to find a shower and a new beanie since they got him out of that dungeon, but his wings are still dreadfully unkempt, even Roier can see that, and Baghera is doing her best to convince Quackity to let her preen, please Quackity, I must, they are so sad, let me help , and in another situation Roier would be laughing and egging Baghera on because it is objectively funny to watch. As it is, he’s barely tuned in to the room around him. 

Richarlyson squirms into his lap, demanding attention. Roier scrubs a hand through his hair, returning the snuggly hug Richarlyson insists on giving him. 

Just outside the door, Roier can hear Philza arguing with Fit and the TazerCraft guys. The tone of voice doesn’t sound angry, just concerned, and from what little he catches the concern is for the kids’ safety, which tracks for Phil. Everyone on the island is pretty safety conscious for the kids, but perhaps nobody is quite so paranoid about it as Phil is.   

“-and who even knows what they did to Q, every one of the kids is in danger right now.”

“We’ve got all of the best PVP-ers on the island in this room right now, though, and Cellbit and the gang have it locked down. It’s gonna be fine.”

Phil makes a frustrated sound, but he follows Fit into the room and picks a seat, followed by Talluah and Chayanne. Chayanne and Dapper immediately huddle up, signing to each other in a corner about something Roier can’t see; Tallulah and Pomme get together and bring out their instruments and duet a familiar tune together, much to the delight of several other adults in the room.

Cellbit claps his hands twice. “Alright, everyone! Thank you for being here, let us begin the meeting.” The room settles down, mostly - the kids are still restless, but most of the adults have either taken a seat or are standing around the table. The room wasn’t constructed with this many people in mind, so there really isn’t enough seats for everyone. “I’m assuming everyone’s heard some of the news, but for the sake of completeness, I’m going to start at the beginning. Everyone knows that yesterday, we found Quackity in a federation prison and broke him out - welcome back, Quackity.” There is a round of applause around the room, ranging from polite golf claps to Foolish and Baghera’s enthusiastic whooping. 

Quackity flushes, ducks his head and mumbles, “Thanks guys. I’m glad to be back,” but not much else. 

Cellbit nods, “Obviously there’s a lot to go over with this, but I’d like to save that conversation for a little later. So, second on the list. Roier and Jaiden’s house was burned down by the federation last night, right around the time most of us were getting off to sleep.” There are a few gasps, some nods, some mumbles. Richarlyson pokes Roier in the arm, gentler than usual. The kid scribbles in his notebook and holds it up for him to see.

‘Pa when are we gonna go burn down a federation office >:0 we need revenge’

It’s enough to bring a smile to his face. Roier really does appreciate Richas’ immediate demand for payback - he’s been feeling the same thing for days now. It also reminds him just a bit of Bobby and his quickness to get into a fight, especially to defend his mother. He presses a kiss to Richarlyson’s hair, the same way he used to do for Bobby, and despite the twinge of heartache that comes any time he thinks of his first son, Richarlyson is no less his son as well, and Roier is no less his father, even if it’s by marriage. More importantly, he’s just a kid, and his emotional needs have to come before Roier’s. 

“Soon, Richas,” he promises, as Cellbit puts the photo of Jaiden from last night up on the wall for everyone to see, “very soon.” 

-

In the back corner of the meeting, Chayanne can’t say he’s super thrilled to see Quackity back, but he supposes it’s better than whoever has been running around the island since the wedding. He’s even more upset to hear about Jaiden - he likes Tia Jaiden, she’s never anything but kind to everyone. She doesn’t deserve what’s going on. Neither did Quackity 

He and Dapper had exchanged notes - both of their parents had told them about the dungeon, the short version, but the Jaiden news is new information. Chayanne is half paying attention to Dapper explaining why they should loop Ramon in on this, half listening to Tio Cellbit explain about how they’ve put all these pieces together.

Honestly, he kinda wishes he wasn’t. Whatever they seem to have done to Tia Jaiden kinda freaks him out. Obviously she isn’t the first person to be kidnapped out of nowhere - Richarlyson can speak to that, certainly - but part of him remembers that he and his siblings had also been spirited away from their homes in the middle of the night once, and they all remembered precisely fuckall about it except that it left them weak and they didn’t really feel recovered for days. How is he supposed to protect his family from an enemy that exclusively exists in a blind spot like sleep? It’s not like he can just not sleep. He’s tried. He’s really, really bad at it. 

He spots Roier’s gun, still sitting on the table. It’s conspicuously missing the clip. Chayanne looks at Dapper and Ramon again and thinks he might know someone who might know how to get one. 

Chapter Text

Cellbit knows that his husband is struggling right now. He knows this because the castle is quiet, has been for the week and change since they had initially discovered Jaiden’s disappearance. It’s wildly out of character - usually, if Roier isn’t getting into something with him, he can hear him and RIcharlyson in another room creating some shenanigans. Cellbit knows what the quiet means, and he hates it. 

And yet, he knows that the best, most efficient thing he can do to help is keep working. 

He’s cleared off the dining room tablet in the castle and made a fresh pot of coffee for Maxo and Bad. It’s 3 in the morning, and spread out across the table are hours of research and notes and books taken from the dungeon, partly courtesy of TazerCraft; At least they had the good sense to loot that last level while everyone was standing around. BBH is reading the heaviest of the books like he’s never heard of sleep; Maximus has done an excellent job getting everything grouped by topic. 

There’s a few headings that keep cropping up. Bluebird and Gemini are the most documented, and the easiest to decipher, but on quick glance they’re dealing mostly with things they already knew or had guessed. Much of the paperwork has references to something called Damocles; It’s easy enough to make the connection to the apocryphal story about the king and the sword, but the paperwork they’ve found so far only references the existence of the project, and not the objective. They’re all frustrated, to say the least. 

Cellbit is on his fifth cup of coffee when he notices Maxo starting to nod off in the lamplight, leaning his cheek into one hand as his grip loosens on the pen in the other. He watches as the fall of Max’s head wakes him up, just enough to realize he’s dozing off. Across the table, Bad marks his place in the book he’s reading with his own handwritten pages of notes and shuts it carefully. “Okay,” he says quietly, “I think it’s time for Max to get off to sleep.”

“I have a guest room we can set him up in?” Cellbit offers. 

“Sure, that’s a good idea.” Bad stands, stretching up to his full height. It’s impressive; Cellbit forgets just how much he towers over everyone else on the island. Most of the time it seems like he’s around the same height as Cellbit, but every so often - like now - he seems to stretch to be nearly three feet taller than everyone else, horns scraping the ceilings. He’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light or a more real quirk of Bad’s inherent nature, but he’s not equipped to deal with the implications of that this far past midnight. “I can help him get to bed. Guest room upstairs, right?” 

And suddenly, he's a regular height again, perfect for slinging one of Max’s arms around his shoulders and slipping an arm around his waist. Cellbit leads the two to the guest room, bringing out the extra blankets from the linens closet. Observes how delicately Bad tucks Maxo in under the blankets, how he brushes a stray hair behind one of Max’s ears when he thinks Cellbit isn’t looking. 

Bad may act completely clueless, but Cellbit knows there’s a romantic buried in there somewhere. The real question is toward whom - he does such an excellent job acting naive that there’s multiple different theories floating around, and Richarlyson’s attempts to set him up with Forever have stalled out, much to the kid’s frustration. They’re apparently both “too stupid”, immune to his plans to collect every parent on the island like trading cards. According to the latest Richas update, and seemingly confirmed here, Maximus has somehow been thrown into this ridiculous triangle. 

Bad lingers a few seconds before joining Cellbit out in the hall. Both refuse to acknowledge the tender little scene - Bad would never admit to it, and Cellbit doesn’t feel like trying to strangle a straight answer out of him anyway. Instead, he asks, “So, we all know Bluebird is referring to Jaiden, right?”

The demon bobs his head, humming a quiet mmyeah in affirmation.

“And Gemini is likely referring to Quackity. Or El Quackity? But is one of them a clone or are they twins?”

Bad shrugs, gestures that they should return to the dining room table where all of the paperwork is, “Honestly it could go either way. The real question is, why did they defrost Quackity and lead us to him?” Cellbit nods - the question has already been near the center of his mental red string conspiracy board since they found him in that dungeon.

They turn the corner back into the dining room. Cellbit hears the faint clink of a spoon in a mug coming from the kitchen; by the smell and the dim silhouette of hunched shoulders through the door frame, Roier is making hot chocolate. 

Bad takes a moment to analyze the situation, makes a call. “I’m gonna take the paperwork and go home, check up on Dapper.”

Cellbit nods, “Message me if you find anything, alright?”

They wish each other a good night; Bad warps away with the documents in his inventory, and Cellbit approaches his husband with a quiet knock on the doorframe to announce his presence. “Are you doing alright?”

“Couldn’t sleep” Roier’s voice is hardly more than a whisper. Cellbit watches him reach into a cabinet, retrieve the homemade vanilla extract he’s been working on for longer than they’ve been married, dribble a little bit into the mug. He catches a whiff of alcohol, remembers that Roier is making this vanilla extract with vodka. 

He waits just a moment for the first sip, for Roier to wrap both his hands around the warm mug. Watches his posture shift as he tilts his head back, rolls his shoulders. 

After another moment, Cellbit says, “Want to talk about it?”

Roier looks at him, finally. The dark circles are getting more pronounced by  the day as this whole fiasco goes on, shaded even more by loose hair not held back by his usual headband. Cellbit knows he hasn’t been sleeping well, has woken up enough to Roier tossing and turning in the ugly hours of the morning. “No,” he says, sullen, “but I should anyway.”

“You’re the psychologist, not me” Cellbit replies, trying to lighten the tone as much as he dares. Roier leans towards him, in the doorway by the kitchen, and rests his head in the crook of Cellbit’s neck, warm mug trapped between them. He wraps his husband up in his arms, best as he can at a sub-optimal angle. They stand there for a while, the last bits of steam from the mug wafting up between them, Roier breathing it in. Cellbit catches a quiet sniffle or two, gently scratches circles into his husband’s back with the very tips of his fingernails in the spot he knows he likes. “Hey. Every day we get closer to finding her. We got lots of documents from them when we took that dungeon, something is gonna give us information. We’re gonna bring her home.”

Roier nods, nose brushing against his collarbone, but doesn’t say anything. 

A speaker block goes off, then again. At this time of night? Both of them perk up, high alert. Roier sets his mug down on the counter and steps out into the dining room, looking for the source to come up the stairs. At the same time, Cellbit’s communicator vibrates in his back pocket. 

[FitMC] hey bad I thought you were at cellbit’s for the night?

[BadBoyHalo] I was

[BadBoyHalo] just got home

[BadBoyHalo] did dapper make it to your place ok? He left a note that he was going to sleep over with ramon?

[FitMC] uh

[FitMC] What?

There is the sound of running feet, short strides, small shoes coming up the stairs, and Ramon and Dapper streak around the corner. Roier, willing his eyes to stop watering, kneels to greet them. Both kids lean in for a hug - Cellbit frowns. Neither of them are usually big fans of physical contact with anyone but their primary parents. 

[FitMC] I just went to check on Ramon and he’s out of bed. No note, no Dapper.

[Cellbit] They’re at my castle

[Cellbit] Just got here. Will send them home.

Cellbit shoves the communicator back into his back pocket, even as it buzzes with responses. “Kids, what are you doing here at this time of night? Your parents are both worried. 

Ramon pulls away - apparently, enough hugging for him for a lifetime - and bounces in place, pulls his backpack off and starts digging into it. Dapper presents his own speaker block, apparently preloaded with a message. The voice is tinny, artificial, neutral. 

‘Me, Chayanne and Ramon have a gift for Tio Roier.’ 

“For me? ” Roier asks, looking between the boys. Ramon nods, still elbow deep in his backpack. Dapper enters a new message into the speaker block, smacks the play button emphatically.

‘We want to help. Chayanne had an idea, but me and Ramon had the skills.’ 

As if on cue, Ramon finally fishes out the small wrapped package he’s been looking for. It’s small and rectangular, wrapped in plain paper and tied up haphazardly with twine. He presents it with both hands to Roier, nearly smacking him in the nose, clearly quite proud by the way he’s bouncing on his toes. It takes a couple tries for Roier to get a hold of it to open it, bleary-eyed as he still is, but once he does Ramon backs up a few steps, still bouncing. Cellbit sees Ramon’s little hands moving, twisting back and forth at his sides, alternately tapping his thumb and last finger against his leg. His twin is less animated, but the spark in the eyes is no less excited. 

The twine unknots easily, and the paper isn’t actually attached as much as it is folded around in roughly the shape of a package. In this low light, he doesn’t catch what is in it, but he hears Roier’s breath catch. “Ramon, where did you get these? ”

Ramon pats his own chest, taps his brother on the shoulder. Puffs out his chest. 

“You two made these?”

Nods from both. Roier looks from them back up to his husband, a kind of deer-in-headlights shock, threatening to spill over into a renewed bout of tears. “Gatinho, they made bullets for the gun. ”

Chapter Text

Jaiden wakes to a recording of a female singer and a swing orchestra, somewhere far away and quiet. There is no light, no sense of heat, a disturbing lack of sensation aside from the airtight mask around her mouth and nose.  She thinks she might be floating on her back? She tries to flex her wings; an immediate sense of pressure tells her that they are still pinned to her back. 

This is absolutely not where she fell asleep. Last place she was, she’s pretty sure she was laying on a tile floor? 

She should be panicking. Normally she would. As it is, she’s groggy and heavy, and the void is so comfortable. Quiet.  Peaceful. She moves her arms through the void, and finds it viscous; more than air, maybe more than water. 

Why is she awake? She’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to be. 

Time passes. The void lulls her back to comfortable sleep. From somewhere in the void, muted swing music swells. 

The ceiling of the void cracks open, and pure white light washes over the creature known as A29.

-

Gemini watches the reactivation of Bluebird from the observation gallery and thinks, if the bird is largely purple save for the splashes of white feathers, thanks to the experimentation she’s received, why do they call it Bluebird?

It’s a stupid question he can answer himself - the project was named long before this particular subject was elevated from the specimen pool, it’s just alliterative enough to be memorable but still nondescript, the name doesn't matter past providing an easy identifier for the project, blah blah blah. He made the mistake of asking, once. All that earned him was a laugh and a flat ‘classified’. Federation workers weren’t supposed to feel or show emotion, but he could swear the damn bear enjoyed holding information over his head. 

As much as he’s supposed to be a fully functioning admin of the Federation, and as good as he is, Gemini knows that there’s a flag on his file that tells the bosses that he’s just not quite perfect enough, despite being effective. He’s too casual, too emotional sometimes. It’s how he was built, the source code he was made from is just the same, he was intended to be this way, and yet he swears the admin always has this smug vibe about him. 

He was supposed to be a replacement. To see how well people were paying attention. Now, he’s being reassigned. 

The gallery sits a floor above three operating theatres like a catwalk, one suite each on three sides of a square room. Glass windows look down into each suite for a fine aerial view of the proceedings. Today, lights are on in two of the theatres. That in and of itself is not totally unusual, but it’s not every day two long-term experiments are running at the same time. 

Bluebird, Gemini thinks, is the more interesting of the two by far. 

She’s been flipped onto her front, wings outstretched. Gemini can see the splashes of white in her coverts and around the carpal edge; a side effect of some idiot tech being reckless when taking samples in the last month or so, and repeatedly. It’s a miracle that Bluebird has been isolating herself so well. Not one of the other residents has made a peep about them. At this point, though, it’s moot - they cannot be removed, for the health of the subject, so the plan at this point is to make them uniform. Make her a good operative. 

Gemini isn’t sure how that works - it’s beyond his technical expertise, and he doesn’t really want to know anyway. The thought makes something in his gut squirm. It shouldn’t, and he’d never admit to it, but it does. 

He wanders to the window on the opposite side of the room, to where they are working on defrosting his source. With Gemini being recalled to the labs, his task among the residents apparently done, Quackity will be returned to the subject group. The task of waking someone from cryo is delicate, takes a long time, and requires several very specialized skill sets, but it is essentially just warming them up in just the right way so the water in their cells doesn’t freeze, crystallize and destroy the cells from within. All this while making sure the subject doesn’t wake up and experience the bone-deep cold and panic. 

Despite his conditioning, it’s still a strange experience to see his own face on that table. This one’s feathers haven’t been touched, aside from where one of the techs is neatly renewing the clip on the flight feathers. The subject is out of the physical ice, but the process to thaw the body is a slow one, and the body on the table is still stiff. Like rigor that hasn’t quite resolved. He can only assume how complicated returning the subject to the community is going to be. It’s not a decision he would be making, if he were in charge. He supposes that’s part of why he’s not in charge.  

His communicator vibrates in his pocket. In fact, the one in charge has just pinged him for a mission update. Gemini bites the inside of his cheek instead of outwardly grimacing - he does not want to talk to the admin’s smug ass, but if he doesn’t show up there will be Consequences. 

He grants himself one last look at his source before he walks out of the bay doors, past the security guard posted there, and takes a direct path toward the admin’s office. 

Just as it ever does, the meeting goes like this:

The bear says ‘good morning what are you doing’ and Gemini says ‘reporting for mission updates’ and the bear says ‘yes hahaha’ and gives him a file and Gemini bites his tongue. He’s good at that. He was made with the intention of being able to turn emotion off like a switch, but the best he can do is keep his face perfectly smooth, betraying none of the irritation he has with the bear. 

Gemini reads the file. The task comes in two parts. The first is that he needs to pack his footlocker and deliver it to Movement Operations. This is easy, as there is little that Gemini possesses to himself that he does not carry on him. The second part is that, in forty-eight hours, he is to leave coordinates for the residents to pick up the subject known as Quackity for the residents to find in a public space. Tucked in an envelope is a feather, nearly white but for the violet roots and shaft remaining. 

The promise of Bluebird will be excellent bait. This shouldn't take much effort.

He frowns. Steals a glance from the corner of his eye at the bear, who is staring. Neutral, expectant. “I have a query. Maybe several.”

“What is your query?” comes the tinny voice of the admin. Flat, expressionless, probably prerecorded. 

“Is the Federation abandoning this post?”

The bear tilts his head, considers the answer for a moment, and says “Yes.”

“Why?” 

“Classified.”

Damn. He hates that word. He thinks, if the administrators are allowed to have favorites, classified is probably this one’s favorite word. “I assume all projects here are being moved or terminated?”

“Yes.”

“Is Project Gemini being terminated?”

“Hahaha. Maybe.” The admin’s fractured idea of humor. Despite the verbal answer, the bear does produce a note for him. He supposes the true answer is more complicated than the parameters of the voice box can allow them to express. He takes the note.

‘The initial goals of Project Gemini have been concluded. The assets are being reassigned. The assets will not be terminated.’

Well, that’s good, at least. He’d hate to get fired. 

Gemini tucks the note into the assignment folder. “I will begin immediately.” he says, and spins on his heel. He’s happy to get the hell out of that office, that’s for sure, and at this point it sounds like he’s got a day and a half of downtime to enjoy.

Chapter Text

 Phil wakes in the morning to the morning sun streaming through the east window of the bathhouse and directly into his eyeballs and a quick, quiet knock at the door. He shifts, scrunches his eyes, rubs the sleep from them before he opens them and looks bleary out the window. He makes the shape of a familiar beanie before he pushes himself into an upright position and confirms yes, Quackity is indeed knocking on his front door at - he squints at the sun, which has not quite left the horizon yet, through the far window - fuck off o’ clock in the morning.

Quackity knocks again after a moment. “Phil?” He asks, quiet in the early morning, “Can I talk to you?” It’s not the usual, confident Quackity that Phil remembers; he’s missing the spitfire attitude and the energy that usually verges on hyperactive. It's too early for the kids or really anyone to be awake, and curiosity over what could have him in this sort of mood finally wins out over sleep. 

When Phil opens the door, Quackity jumps and stares like he hadn't been expecting him to actually answer. Phil leans against the doorframe and makes another attempt to clear the last bits of sleep from the inside corner of his eye. "Mate, it is so early. What's going on?"

"Sorry" Quackity is fidgeting, looking anywhere but Phil's face . "I just- this is so dumb, sorry- "

"Stop apologizing and tell me what's wrong, man- "

"Can I use your bathhouse?" Quackity nearly shouts the question at him. Phil barely opens his mouth before he keeps going, stumbling over his words to explain himself. "It's just, I can't- the river's too deep, and it's cold anyway, and I just wanna be warm and be able to see the bottom."

"Mate, have you been bathing in the river this whole time?"

Quackity shrugged, like the answer was obvious. "Well, yeah." 

Phil sighs. “Aha. And we suddenly have decided not to do this anymore because…?”

“Look, can I use your shower or not?”

Phil takes another moment to reassess the scene in front of him, now that he’s a little more awake. Quackity is holding a bundle of something in his arms, wrapped up in a well-used towel. He’s relaxed a little bit since they started talking, taking back up a more usual defiant tone, but the dark circles of his eyes tell Phil that he hasn’t slept well in the couple of days since he’s been rescued. What’s more, as much as he managed to wash off the grime of the Federation kidnapping once they got him back home, the state of his wings is just pitiful. 

Quackity isn’t Phil’s kid, but there’s only a couple avians in their little island community, and as much as Phil is a solitary person generally , there’s a voice in the back of his head that demands he take the kid underwing and get him cleaned up and straightened out. Which is patently ridiculous. He’s a young adult, not a hatchling, not an egg. Even so, Phil is much, much older than he looks, and sometimes it feels like everyone around him is a child in comparison - Foolish and Bad excluded. 

Quackity is staring at him, expression guarded but expecting an answer. Phil sighs. “Only if you let me straighten your wings out. Just looking at them is making me itch.” 

“First Baghera, now you?” Quackity’s wings twitch behind him and fold tighter to his back, as if hiding the state of them is going to help. “I can take care of it myself.”

“Look, mate, you’re gonna want help or it’s gonna take all day,” Phil counters. “If you’re going to use my bathhouse to clean up, I’m gonna insist you do it properly, since you’re gonna be getting shed feathers in my bath either way.” Quackity opens his mouth to argue, but he’s stilled by a crow alighting to his shoulder. The crow clack-clack-clacks its beak at him, picks a piece of downy fuzz out of place from top of his wing and tries to tuck it under the brim of his beanie before he shoos it away. It squawks at him, indignant, and settles for the roof of Phil’s little hovel instead. Phil giggles. “Look, even the crows want to help.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means.” Quackity glares at the crow, who has been joined by two more. They all stare back, unblinking, and one opens it’s beak and lets out the most ungodly, nearly robotic-sounding warble. “I think it’s broken, Phil.”

Phil leans out from the threshold, glances up at the murder slowly gathering on his roof, and snorts. “Nah, that’s just Brian. He’s just like that.” Brian continues to make whatever noises he’s making today, and Phil returns his attention to Quackity in front of him. “Just go take a shower. I’m gonna start on breakfast, the kids should be waking up soon.”

“I’ll get out of your hair before then.”

Phil frowns. “Quackity, you can stay for breakfast if you want. I know Tallulah would be happy to see you.” It occurs to Phil that despite him being an adult, Quackity is still young , and he doesn’t have a huge amount of support on the island. And granted, he’s been kind of a shit for a lot of their stay here, but if the very bare-bones debrief of his latest stay with the Federation was anything to go by, he’s been dealing with a lot, alone. “Seriously. I’ll even tell Chayanne to behave.”

Quackity is back to fidgeting again, considering for a moment. Then, “...what’s for breakfast?”

-

Something like two hours later, the remains of toast and bacon have been abandoned to the crows and Quackity has gotten roped into teaching Chayanne and Tallulah basic card games, using one of the merlons of the Wall as a table and betting with plant seeds instead of chips. Blackjack is one of Quackity's favorite games to teach, he decides, and the kids are eager students, even if their poker faces need work. Chayanne’s face is the definition of concentration as he squints between his own cards and Quackity’s face, while Tallulah is just happy to be there.

Phil, meanwhile, is busy combing through his feathers with a tool that reminds him of a three-inch paintbrush with a longer, pointier handle, and Quackity will admit that he’d forgotten how much having another avian around to help preen was a godsend. His feathers haven’t felt so good in months. The first few passes with the stick end of the Phil’s weird tool are ticklish, like the bottom of a foot, sending his wing twitching and setting his feathers on end, but they also scratch an itch Quackity hadn’t realized he’d been ignoring. 

(And despite everything, despite how something in the fog of forgotten memories something tells him that the old crow is dangerous as hell in a way Quackity isn’t sure he wants to remember, the man currently brushing out the undersides of his wings gives him no reason to think he might be unwelcome, even despite their disagreements in the past. )

Briefly, he thinks he could turn around and hug Phil. Incredibly briefly. He might settle for asking Phil how he got ahold of this tool so he can get one himself. It’s a lot nicer than the stick he’d been using. 

Chayanne looks at his cards, then up at his dad behind Quackity’s left shoulder, scrunching his nose. Then, he taps the makeshift table. Hit. Quackity deals him a card that he apparently doesn’t like, but he doesn’t bust. Tallulah swishes her hand in front of her. Stand.  

Quackity, as the dealer, has to hit on 16. From the top of the deck he reveals seven of clubs -  a bust, just barely. Chayanne and Tallulah cheer and divide up their pot of eighteen whole seeds between themselves, even though that’s not really how it’s supposed to work-

The stone pillar in front of Phil’s house sounds twice, and Quackity has to fight the urge to pull his wing away from Phil and spin around to face whoever it is. Chayanne and Tallulah light up, abandoning their little piles of seeds in favor of whatever uncles have show up today at the crossroads of Phil’s place.

From his left shoulder, Quackity hears Phil call out, “Good morning!”

“Hi, Phil,” he hears Cellbit call back, and Quackity assumes the other activation of the warp point is Roier. “Something came up last night and - Oh, hey Quackity.” Quackity hears the pause in Cellbit’s speech, and he’s torn between standing up and facing the group and letting Phil keep working. Cellbit doesn’t sound at all nervous or upset to see him - why was he expecting that? - and might even be happy he’s here? 

And then he hears a quiet, “Ey, culero,” and Roier steps into his field of vision, looking mostly at his shoes more than at anyone else. Chayanne and Tallulah are each holding one of Roier’s hands, nearly dragging him into view. 

Quackity feels Phil pause behind him as the silence hangs over the group. From one of the trees nearby, Brian the Crow can be heard making some other godawful noise. “If you're gonna fight, you’re not gonna do it in my garden,” Phil says. There’s no threat in the tone, but Quackity just knows that he can enforce the peace if he needs to. 

“No, no, no, I’m not here to fight,” Roier is quick to say. “No, I am here to - to say I am sorry?” He says it like he’s unsure - unsure of the words, perhaps, or unsure of apologizing? “And to say thank you to Chayanne.” 

Phil hums in response and returns the task at hand, moving to the feathers at the leading edges of the wing. “Nearly done, nearly done,” he mutters, half to himself. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

Roier seems to summon up whatever courage he needs to look Quackity in the eyes. He doesn’t normally need to force that confidence this way, but it comes across all the more genuine for it. “I shouldn’t have broken your nose,” he says in Spanish, “That was fucked up. You didn’t deserve my anger like that.” Cellbit doesn’t say anything, but he does put a supportive hand on Roier’s shoulder. 

He doesn’t beg for forgiveness or anything. Quackity doesnt think he would know how to react if he did. This kind of serious apology is so out of the realm of their normal interaction. “...Uh, yeah. We’re good.” He’s not sure what else to say, but apparently that’s enough for Tallulah to start swinging Roier’s hand back and forth happily. He and Roier give each other a nod, never shall we speak of this again , and the tension fades. “What happened with Chayanne?”

“Chayanne is a genius ,” Cellbit speaks up, ruffles Chayanne’s hair. The kid grins up at them, bouncing on his toes just a little. “Chayanne, Dapper and Ramon - they’re so smart. Roier, show them.” Roier takes his hand back from Chayanne, fishes for something in the pocket of his hoodie - not in his main inventory or a backpack - and reveals what is unmistakably an ammunition clip for a pistol. In the light, Quackity can see a tiny mustache engraved lightly on the broad side. 

“Holy shit,” Quackity and Phil say in unison. 

Chayanne grins broadly and signs, ‘It was mostly Ramon, but me and Dapper helped.’

“Ohohoho, that’s huge .” Phil is impressed, “You kids are so fucking smart - when did you even have the time?”

“How the fuck did you even make that? Shit’s impossible to craft.” Quackity wonders aloud. 

‘I have been sworn to secrecy on pain of death,’ Chayanne signs back. ‘Ask Ramon.’

“I already tried,” Roier replies, “Both of them. They wont tell me!”

Before Quackity’s eyes, Chayanne and Roier’s argument - por favor digame, pinche Chayanne, ven aqui - turns into a game of chase. Chayanne is nimble, taking corners around trees just a little bit sharper than Roier. 

It’s about this time that Phil decides he’s finished preening and takes a step back. He folds his arms across his chest, nods to himself, and says “Yeah, I think we’re finished. That ought to be loads better, right?”

He’s right. Quackity genuinely doesn’t remember the last time his wings felt this good. There’s bits of fuzzy debris and shed littering the top of the wall; Nearby, the ever-present crows are eyeing the aftermath to collect, presumably for whatever nests they have going on in the avocado grove. “Feels amazing. Thanks, Phil, really.”

Cellbit tears his eyes away from his husband to grin at Quackity for just a moment. “Baghs is going to be so mad she missed her chance to preen you, man."

Chapter Text

The first time Roier helps Jaiden with her wings is roughly a week after they are assigned Bobby. They’re still nervous around each other, but Jaiden has taken up her role as mother to Bobby with some excitement, and Roier finds himself happy in a protector role. She makes it easy, Bobby makes it easy, despite everything that’s happened to him in this fucking island already. 

Jaiden doesn’t seem to want to talk about her wings, doesn’t mention them, but it’s hard not to notice the stray feathers popping up in the house, or the subtle nesting behavior in Bobby’s room. She doesn’t mention it, so he doesn’t bring it up. He’s not sure he has the English to explain to her that it’s okay for her to take up space here - she’s Bobby’s mother, it can be her home too, if she wants. 

He finds her on the balcony that evening, wings spread out in full, showing off the purple backs, turning cyan at the tips. It’s not a very usual coloration for a bird, he thinks, even for a parrot, but he can’t help but think they must be cramped, however she manages to hide them all day. She’s got the left one pinned under her arm, poking awkwardly at the back with the stick end of a long paintbrush. It’s seemingly not going well.

“Do you need help?” Roier asks.

Jaiden startles, turns to spot him before relaxing just a hair. “Oh, I can probably manage,” She laughs, waves the paintbrush dismissively. “I’ve been doing it myself for the past couple weeks, you know?”

“You don’t have help?” He relaxes against the doorframe. He knows there’s other avians on the island. “You cannot ask Quackity? Or Philza?”

“I don't really know them too well? Preening is… kind of personal, especially the backs? Sometimes its seen as kind of - romantic , almost.” She hesitates with the last word, like she’s trying to find a better one. “Not by everyone, and not all the time! But I’m really not trying to give that impression?”

Honestly, Roier gets it, even if he’s not really familiar with avian grooming etiquette. “No, no, it’s okay! I am not trying to make you, ah, uncomfortable.”

Jaiden continues, looks him in the eyes. “It’s just - you gotta really feel like you can trust someone.” She lets go, unpins the wing from under her arm. She flaps once, twice, quickly, puffing up each feather before they settle down. The shape, he thinks, is definitely some sort of parrot, versus Quackity’s obvious duck characteristics or Philza’s corvid tendencies. It makes sense to her personality. “Not that I don’t trust you-”

“It’s okay, Jaiden!” He waves, laughs, hopes to lighten the mood a bit. “Esta bien. It’s okay.”

“ - Because I do trust you! Yesterday, when Slime was on his little rampage, and I had four kids I was trying to protect while Fit and Bad were out trying to find him before he got to us, all I kept thinking was ‘I wish Roier was here, I’d feel a lot safer if Roier was here.’ And then you showed up, and I was so relieved!” 

He remembers her face, the way she ushered him inside and into the farm where she had clearly been doing her best to keep the kids busy and quiet, and he believes her. 

“But, like, I feel like I’m already asking a lot from you? You just let me move in without hardly talking about it -”

“Yes, you are Bobby’s mother, deberias vivir aqui- ”

“ - And I’m using your stuff, and you always have to protect me and Bobby when we go out, and I just don’t want you to think I can’t take care of myself.” Jaiden’s jaw clamps shut suddenly, like she’s said too much. 

It takes a second for the translation to catch up; Roier is getting faster with English with all the practice recently, but Jaiden talks fast when she’s nervous. When it finally comes across, Roier sighs. “Jaiden, I do not know how to explain - you are good! Protegiste todos los huevos ayer, solo. También, necesito tu ayuda con Bobby. Bobby necesita a su madre, ¿sabes?”

He watches Jaiden’s eyes, flicking rapidly back and forth, reading the translation, expression changing as, he hopes, she internalizes the message. 

“I know,” she says after a moment, “I’m… trying to remember that. Thank you, Roier.”

“ De nada. ” 

“We’re not married.”

“ Que,” Roier bursts out laughing, “Noooo, Jaiden, what the fuck? No, no. What made you say this?”

“I mean, Slime and Mariana. And Phil and Missa, too, apparently. ” 

“ No mames. No, we are not married. We are two parents, to one Bobby. ”

Jaiden laughs, finally, and Roier finds his shoulders relaxing. He hadn’t realized they’d been tensed. “Okay, that’s fair, I guess. Um,” She shuffles her wings, a bit of nerves coming back but not nearly as much as before, “If you still want to help, can I teach you how to do the base? I haven’t done the other wing yet.”

-

Yet another restless night finds Roier staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t dare move too much; His gatinho is curled around his torso, eyes flickering beneath his eyelids. What is he dreaming about? He wonders. Cellbit only seems to get actual REM sleep maybe once every few days, and he deserves every minute he can get. His nose is pressed against Roier’s ribs, and Roier finds himself gently carding through his husband’s hair, twisting the lock of shock-white in his hairline into one perfect curl, and he stares at the ceiling and imagines his family.

Sometimes, in the depths of his heart, he misses the before. Before his marriage, before the arrival of the French, when it was just him and his son and his partner, being a family. When the worst of their problems was someone using mines as a practical joke and mob-proofing their house. Dangerous, but doable. The island community when it was small, but friendly. 

Largely not wondering who is betraying them for the federation. If those betrayals are real, or a ruse. If a friendship is a ruse. If a friend has been replaced by a clone. People he loves being kidnapped - he’d have two nickels, as the saying apparently goes. 

Painting with his partner and their son, and being the most well adjusted pair of parents on the island (both regularly home, not at each other’s throats constantly,) and secretly taking some pride in that. 

He loves his husband. He loves Richarlyson. But he still mourns.

Cellbit’s breath is whistling through his nose with every breath. It’s a brief moment of peace for a peaceless man. He doesn’t want to disturb him. And yet.

Gently, Roier slides himself out from under Cellbit’s arm and rolls out of bed as quietly as humanly possible. The floor doesn’t creak under his feet; he knows, has mapped out all of the noisy spots of the floor between the bed and the balcony, and he toes the line between speed and stealth in the fifteen feet between the two. 

He throws a leg over the balcony railing before sparing one last look at his husband. Cellbit’s brow has scrunched, in the way Roier adores in the daylight.

He can’t afford to dwell on it. He jumps, absorbs the impact with the ground without sound. Retrieves the backpack stashed by the base of a bridge piling. I shouldn't be doing this. Equips the armor over his pajamas. I should have my husband by my side. Turns his location off on the map. He’s the infiltrator, the detective. 

He can imagine Jaiden’s laugh. ‘Roier’s got nothin’ but a gun and a dream,’ She’d say. She’s always supported him, trusted him to come to her aid. He can’t betray that trust, and he can’t bring himself to be patient any longer. 

There are nineteen rounds in his pistol, courtesy of Ramon. He will have to be conservative with them. 

-

[Cellbit msg BadBoyHalo] do you have the bluebird folder?

[Cellbit msg BadBoyHalo] it’s not with the rest of the docs

[BadBoyHalo msg Cellbit] No? I have my copies of some things 

[BadBoyHalo msg Cellbit] You have the originals.

[Cellbit msg BadBoyHalo] the bluebird folder is gone

[Cellbit msg BadBoyHalo] so is roier

[BadBoyHalo msg Cellbit] I’m coming over immediately.

Chapter Text

Roier really wants to warp to Spawn and take the train tracks as far south as they go, but the waystones are loud as hell and he’s really not trying to let the whole island know where he’s going. He has a waypoint set, found in the files stolen from that federation lab; its far to the south, further out than before, some ten or twelve thousand blocks out. Cellbit and Bad are pretty sure it’s another lab, but it’s hard to say if it’s active or just another derelict. But it's the only lead he has.

It’s going to be a long journey.

He passes under the arms of the Redeemer, past the grassy field where they’d had Festa Junina. He can see the spot where he and Jaiden had their chat - that cinematic moment with the dawning sun framing her like a painting, hair wild and gilded gold at the edges in the morning light after an all-nighter in the Favela, and feeling in his heart Bobby was there with them in spirit -  and he drifts right, to hug the Wall. The night creatures are scattered, a meathead here, a zombie there, but keeping close to the Wall means he has that much less forest to keep an eye on. 

The closer he gets to Spawn, the more paranoid he feels. He glances around, glances at his map - nobody. Phil has claimed the whole Wall as his territory, but it’s two in the morning, even Phil should be asleep right now. He passes by La France, to his left, and the beginnings of the botanical garden Phil and Tallulah have started. It’s shaping up well, he thinks, though it’s little but an arch carved into the base of the Wall so far. 

He has a compulsion to check his communicator. Map location is still turned off, no messages in global or direct. Stop. It’s fine. Nobody’s awake. He puts it away. No point in checking, anyway. 

He’s fine, until he gets to the train station and he could swear he hears footsteps.

Roier stops to look around. There’s the dim lighting in the station, just enough to cast deep shadows in the corners. Sounds echo strangely in the big room of the station. He moves again, and again he swears someone is shadowing his footsteps. Nearly impossible to hear, but Roier is paranoid as hell and on high alert, and it’s otherwise totally silent apart from the crackle of a torch here and there. 

He moves out to the platform, to the tracks; theres a heavy stumble of an impact on the platform maybe five meters behind him, spins, and draws his sword on a sheepish Philza.

They stand in the shitty lighting of the near-abandoned train platform, Phil with his arms raised in a gesture clearly meant to communicate I come in peace please don’t attack me,  and Roier with breath held as high as his blade. A breeze passes; they both take a deep breath. 

Phil cracks a smile, “Insomnia got you too, huh?”

What an absurd thing to say. Roier drops his blade. “Felipe, whatthefuck are you doing here, man?” 

“Well, I was farming potatoes, until I saw your suspicious ass.”

Roier curses inwardly, - he knew he’d felt eyes on him - and bluffs. Or, tries to. “Pff, whaaaat? Me? I’m going for a walk, man, same as you.”

“Ah. Right. Certainly not acting on your own about this whole Jaiden thing, right?” Phil gives him a look - a universal Look, that says motherfucker I know you’re lying to me. Of all the people on this island, he thinks Cellbit is the most observant by default, but Phil is the most likely to know when he’s being lied to. 

So he doesn’t. Instead, Roier pulls the documents from his pack. “I’m going to rescue Jaiden.”

Phil blinks, confused. “Alone? At two in the morning? I thought the Order was still looking at the paperwork we found?”

“It’s taking too long. Cellbit, hm, he wants to do it safe, you know? I can’t wait around.”

“Mate, you can’t just do this alone-”

“Are you going to stop me, Philza Minecraft?” Roier raises his sword again. Not a threat, but a warning. “I’m not going to wait. Do you wanna go with, or do you wanna go? ”

Phil seems to consider this. He looks back towards the Wall, then at the inventory on his person, then back at Roier with a grim expression. “Well, shit,” he swears, resigned, “I can’t very well let you get yourself kidnapped alone, can I? Cellbit would kill me.”

-

Tallulah wakes up to the whispers again. It’s dark in the safehouse. Chayanne is probably snoring, he always does, but her hearing aids are out and the earplugs are in, so in theory she should hear nothing. And yet. The whispers. 

Get up! Get up, Tallulah!

She turns over and pulls her blankets over her head. It's too early for this nonsense. 

Hermana please, its important.

Talluuuuuulah

Tallulah, you need to get up. 

  She sits up. Her vision is blurry, sleep clinging to the edges. She finds her footing in the lush carpet of the basement. It’s dark in here, mostly, but the luminescing plants leave just enough light to make it to the ladder fine. Papa Phil isn’t in the basement, so that means he’s probably upstairs in the bathhouse, in his actual bed. 

She makes her way up the ladder slowly, sleep being chased away with every rung. By the time she gets to the top, the first orangey colors of the predawn light are just starting to crest over La France in the distance. It’s a good color. She still needs to find a flower that matches. 

Tallulah lets herself into the bathhouse, grasping blindly at the rumpled sheets. Papa Phil. Where is Papa Phil…? She should have hit a leg or a wing by now. Tallulah peels her eyes open again. It’s a little easier this time, and in the first lights of the day, she sees her Papa isn’t in bed. 

Well, that's probably fine, right…? He’s got insomnia sometimes, he’s probably just out doing potato rounds. Surely. 

She waits an hour, sitting among the blankets that smell like him. The voices of her dead siblings chatter, concerned but incoherent. They’re barely recognizable as separate voices, and they aren’t sure what’s going on either. She sits like this in her Papa’s bed, waiting for him to come back, because surely he’ll come back and make some more godawful avocado toast and joke about how much she hates it. Surely he hasn’t just up and left. He promised. She’s pretty sure he promised. 

She doesn’t realize that she’s crying until Chayanne comes up the ladder and she rushes out to him. 

Papa’s gone, she signs, I dont know where he is.

What do you mean, gone? Chayanne’s response is lazy with sleep - Lord knows he’s not a morning person, and his gestures reflect just how barely coherent he is in the morning. So does the awful mop of hair, and the rubbing at the eyes. 

I woke up early. He wasnt in the basement, he wasn’t in the house. He should be back by now, right?  

Maybe Tio Fit has seen him? Or maybe he went over to Tio Cellbit’s castle for investigation stuff. He probably just lost track of time. 

Maybe. Tallulah isn’t reassured. She’s pretty sure Chayanne is grasping at straws. Should we go ask?

Probably. Maybe we start with Tio Fit. I think he wakes up pretty early? Tio Cellbit is a late sleeper.

Just like you.

If God didn’t want me to sleep in so much, he should have made me a chicken instead of a dragon.

-

[Ph1lza msg FitMC] yo can you take care of chayanne and tallulah when you wake up please? Something came up in the middle of the night.

[Ph1lza msg FitMC] Ty in advance king :>

[FitMC msg Ph1lza] phil where the fuck are you and roier going. 

[FitMC msg Ph1lza] cellbit is freaking out 

[FitMC msg Ph1lza] so are your kids. Remember them?

[FitMC msg Ph1lza] I know you can handle yourselves but this is not very ‘community minded’ of you or whatever

[FitMC msg Ph1lza] msg us back

Chapter Text

The individual known as A29 is prop more than person. This is accepted.

It does not have emotions.

(it hurts to think too hard)

It does not have memories.

(oh god so many, too many, which ones are real and which are dreams?)

It has a mission to complete.

(it wasn’t supposed to be this. She was supposed to be protecting.)

-

Some months ago, she had a son. Some months ago, the sunset became a bereavement as much as a beauty. Some months ago, she began having dreams. 

Well, nightmares really. About her son, and a death she wasn’t there to witness. And then a goodbye. 

In her dreams, she thinks she says goodbye to her son, but the door slams up between her and Roier instead, and leaves her in darkness. Others, she can’t quite remember, or maybe she is forced to forget, but they always seem to stay with her. 

She thinks she is dreaming now. It doesn’t make sense. She cannot speak. She cannot move of her own volition, but move she does.

A29 becomes of her slowly, as the water boils the frog. Layers of emotional distance and a psychic narcotic are required until the mental programming is complete enough to trigger the next phase of Bluebird. In the daylight, she is exhausted. In the nighttime, she only thinks she is safe in her loneliness.

In her dreams, everything she loves burns. The roses ignite. The sanctuary comes to ashes. She moves through the paintings and flowers like a ghost as she sets sparks to dried blooms and canvas and wooden beams. There is the impression of a far-off, looming goal, and these are the first steps. 

A29 is a good tool, if imperfect, but Jaiden is still a person yet. 

In her nightmares, Jaiden watches herself walk out of that burning building and down her front stairs. There, A29 reports to the waiting Administrator. At first, Jaiden is overjoyed. Perhaps Cucurucho can recognize that something is wrong.

Cucucrucho does not address Jaiden. Instead, the Administrator examines the asset.

“A29. Please, report your status.”

Jaiden wants to scream, “Please, help me, something is very wrong. .” 

Instead, A29 replies, “Programming is stable but incomplete. Additional technical support is required.”

-

Tonight, a29 watches as an old crow and an old partner travel south in the predawn dark. It cannot follow by boat - that would be far too noticeable, one of the mission parameters is stealth. Instead, it watches. It predicts. There are many satellite laboratories the Federation runs in the muddled archipelago that is Isla Quesadilla, but it is a known item which facility the pair are destined for.

Chapter Text

In the predawn light, the southern bay is still, with the barest of waves lapping at the boat as Roier and Philza rowed onward. 

Phil considers the scene in front of him. After they’d set off in the boat to cross the large inland sea, Roier had been quiet - too quiet, for Phil's taste, the kid normally didn't stop talking, but he had been quiet for… how long had it been since Jaiden's house had burned? A couple weeks, at this point? 

Phil sorts through his backpack. Normally, he wouldn't be traveling this light, but he could hardly have asked Roier to wait, could he? There were far too many potatoes in his bag from working the fields, not enough potions for his liking. Not much by the way of backup weapons. He pulls a stack of golden apples to the top of his bag. “Roier, how well supplied are you? Do you have enough food? Potions, gapples?”

Roier, still rowing, doesn’t meet his eyes. “I have enough.”

“I don't like that answer a whole lot.”

“What the fuck does it matter what you like, Felipe? Go home to your kids if you want,” Roier snapps with a bitter edge. 

“I'm trying to help you. Do you want these gapples or not?” Phil holds the fruit between them; an olive branch. “You’re gonna need to keep your strength up. It’s this or avocado toast.”

Roier paused rowing to take the offered fruit, studying first the fruit and then the gifter suspiciously. He isn't wrong, Roier probably should have prepared better, and all this rowing and silence is giving him too much time to question his own decisions. Cellbit would be waking up soon, along with the earliest risers of the island, and he'd be waking to cold sheets. He'd be upset, maybe even hurt; God knows how Phil's kids will feel with their other father gone. 

Roier meets his own eyes, reflected in the skin of the apple; the darkened circles under his eyes are getting bad, especially without concealer. It doesn’t matter. Jaiden is out there, and she has been enduring worse than he, and had kept it secret from what passed for family on this Godforsaken Isla Quesadilla. 

“Roier, you're gonna stare a hole into that gapple.” Phil's voice cuts cleanly through the threatening thought spiral. Roier took a deep breath to try to center himself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah, man, I can do therapy on myself.”

“Doesn't mean you have to.”

They are silent for a moment. The eastern horizon is starting to pink up as the sun gets closer to rising. Roier is pretty sure the far shore should be in view soon.

“I'll row for a bit, if you want?” Phil offers. 

Roier shrugs, and he sets the gapple down uneaten in favor of taking up the oars again. “Nah. It helps, um. To get my mind right.”

“If you're sure.” Phil's expression is cryptic, analytical. “You can ask for help, you know.”

“If I need it, I will ask.” He doesn’t thank Phil, even though polite company probably would. Phil doesn’t pry further - thank God - and instead he pulls a bow from his inventory and sets it on his lap. The subtle shimmer of the enchantment casts a soft glow, before the sunrise overwhelms them in golden light. 

-

Fit stands next to a jumpier-than-normal Cellbit, watching their kids plus Chayanne and Tallulah take an early morning nap after working themselves up at oh-dark-thirty this morning, and thinks two things.

First, he thinks he’s gonna kill Phil and Roier the next time he sees them. Or at least Phil, definitely. Cellbit might have first dibs on killing his husband, and Fit can hardly blame him. Would killing Phil be an easy task? Probably not, but Fit is willing to bet that he can give the old man a run for his money. 

The second train of thought has him wondering when Pac and Mike are gonna wake up, cause he’d really like to see them and he’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be their day with Richarlyson. The TazerCraft guys always seemed to be on odd schedules, but Fit could usually count on at least Pac being awake in the mornings around the same time. 

It was odd, for Fit, to look forward to seeing people on a regular basis. More than a decade spent mostly in the Wasteland had taught him to avoid people and not put down roots, and here he was with a house and a kid and a community that he liked seeing. And trusted. If he thought about it too much, it freaked him out just a little. 

But Ramon had quickly become the center of his life, and people like Phil and Pac and Mike and everyone else had quickly become the constellations surrounding them. 

So when two of the most active members of the community decide to fuck off with no notice and leave their kids and at least one spouse in a panic, no backup, no nothin’, Fit feels like he’s got a right to facilitate knocking some sense into them. 

Cellbit is pacing again. He’s been pacing intermittently, staring at the global chat, waiting for a message. Fit’s pretty sure he’s not gonna get one - Phil hasn’t answered him back either. Most of the island isn’t awake yet, thought Bad is apparently on his way. The guy never seems to sleep. Cellbit is wearing tracks into his floor. If Fit wasn’t pretty sure he was a literal demon from the literal Nether, or some version of it anyway, it might be concerning. Most of the rest of the island isn’t awake yet to inform. Cellbit is muttering to himself.

Fit puts a hand on Cellbit’s shoulder to stop him as he passes on his eleventy-first loop around the couch where the kids are sleeping. Cellbit jumps, then relaxes. 

“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor if you keep doing that,” Fit says, not unkindly. 

“Sorry,” Cellbit says. His eyes are pinpricks, anxious. He tries to take a deep breath, and shudders on the exhale. 

“Don’t apologize. It’s not like it’s my floor.”

Cellbit sits in front of the couch, on the floor. He doesn’t stop moving - he’s tapping his foot, or his fingers, or wiggling his whole leg. Fit isn’t sure how much coffee Cellbit’s had this morning, but he’s clearly at least a whole pot behind the guy. 

Two soft sets of footfalls announce the arrival of Bad and Dapper. Fit puts a finger to his mouth as they turn the corner. 

Fit shushes them as they come around the corner with a finger across his lips and a pointed look at the couch. 

Bad pauses, reads the scene, and coos quietly. “They’re so cute when they’re sleeping!”

Fit frowns. “They’re traumatized, Bad,” 

“Aren’t we all?” Fit doesn’t have a response to that; Bad strides by after his kid, who’s gone to sit next to Ramon on the couch. Quietly, preternaturally so, he slides a thick tan folder out of his backpack and lays it on the coffee table in front of Cellbit. “I brought the folder. These should be copies of everything Roier took with him. There’s coordinates to a few facilities, but I think I’ve identified the one he’s going to, down south.”

Cellbit shifts forward, leans over the paperwork. Bad opens the folder, leafs through to the page he wants, and centers the page in front of Cellbit, tapping two long, shadowed fingers on the heading. 

Fit leans over, tilts his head so he can see. 

‘PROJECT DAMOCLES’

“Do we know what that is?” Fit asks. 

Cellbit shrugs; Bad shakes his head. “Just mentions of the project, but not the goals. Theyve been careful to compartmentalize it from the facility we raided.”

Fit hums to himself. “Have we asked Quackity about this? He’s spent more time in the Federation than any of us, hell, they led us there to pick him up.”

“He’s been a recluse ever since he’s gotten out. I’d like to talk with him about it when I get the chance.” Bad says.

“He was just at Philza’s house a couple of mornings ago,” Cellbit speaks up from his place on the floor. “Playing a card game with the kids. Maybe they know where he goes?”

Bad hums in agreement, “I think Tallulah cares about him a lot. She might be the best to ask.”

“Or,” Fit interrupts, “We could just ask him to come by? Message him?” Cellbit and Bad blinked at him. “Jesus, how am I the first person to suggest that? I'm inviting him over. Hopefully he's awake.”

[FitMC msg Quackity] can you meet us at cellbits castle when you get this? Please acknowledge.

He shoots the message off and stares at the screen like it's gonna make something happen. Phil still hasn't messaged back either. It's not like him; Phil can handle himself, sure, and he's seen Roier hold his own in a scrap, but Fit can't help but worry. 

[Quackity msg FitMC] omw