Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

 The quaint, far-away dream cottage that they move into is a fantastic house. 

 Fields of lavender blossoms and blooming wildflowers stretch out in all directions, and the air is thick with the fragrance of spring. 

 Dapper spends a day or two when they first move in hanging a swing from the big cherry tree out front. The branches are solid and wide and they take the ropes well, and even if the plank he uses for the seat is a little uneven, Pomme likes it well enough. 

 They’re far enough out that the Code itself might not even be able to reach them.

 And if it does, Dapper is ready. 

 Sure, he hopes it doesn’t. But if it does, he’s got a stash of soulsteal potions saved up and hidden where his father will never find them: literally just in the outer pocket of his backpack. Bad’s not very good at finding things.

 He’s tried out the potions— the sting of the silver-blue liquid going down is just as painful as letting the dang birds bite him, and the feeling of another’s life force entering his own makes him feel like all of his bones are slightly off size. Not particularly comfortable. 

 He’d rather not let things get to a point where he has to use them, but—

 Pomme spends her days hovering around Bad, pestering and begging until he relents; she drags him out into the back garden and practices the scythe for hours, memorizing forms, putting more and more force into her swings, learning to be smooth and fast and capable in combat until she’s even better at it than Dapper is.

 Pot calling the kettle black, but he can tell she intends to carry the weight of their safety all on her own shoulders, especially with Bad’s declining health. It’s practically a Halo Family Tradition at this point. He refuses to let her be their last line of defense.   

 Again, he doesn’t want things to get to a point where he has to drink the soulsteal potions. But there are worse points for things to get to.

 Even if the sight of swirling souls alone is enough to make him sick. 

 Anyways— the idea is that the house is great. It’s got everything they could ask for. It’s idyllic. It’s safe.

 And yet it’s still a far, far cry from feeling like a home.

* * *

 It starts out small, like most fissures do. 

 Go fish, Dapper declares, flipping over a series of matching cards in quick succession— two aces, the red sixes, and the pair of jokers Pomme insisted they leave in because their faces were too silly to leave out.

 He smugly sorts the pairs into neat stacks, setting them in a row with the other matches.

 Memory isn’t much of a skill game, but Dapper is still beating Pomme and Bad by a solid six-point margin. 

 He knows that he’ll lose it eventually. In games like this, where your turn continues for as long as you sustain it, things can change remarkably fast.

 Dapper knows how it’ll go, because Pomme’s always been the type to play the long game, and Bad…

 Bad isn’t winning any time soon.

 His brain visibly lags after Dapper’s hands move, his eyes blank and brows furrowing as he tries to process both the game and the sign language. 

 It’s been taking him longer and longer to understand the dragon-children’s silent dialect since purgatory, since— yeah, since purgatory. Dapper can only hope it’s due to a lack of practice that accrued while they were kidnapped, and nothing else. 

 Maybe Dapper could go back to writing actual signs again? Maybe that would help.

 Then again, he’s not entirely certain his father can read. 

 He’s so old he probably predates the concept of language entirely. Dapper is merely being reasonable by waiting for Bad to formulate an answer instead of pulling out his old, tattered notepad. Maybe he speaks dinosaur?

 After a pause that some literature would call pregnant— bizarrely; Dapper’s never really understood it— he’s certain he made the right call. Pomme’s worried glance weighs heavy on his shoulders, but Bad jumps like a lawnmower that has just been kicked into start-up.

 He’s hard booted. Maybe he doesn’t speak dinosaur, but is he fluent in binary…?

 “ Ohhh, ” and “You should have told me we were playing Go Fish!” are the first things out of his mouth, followed by a sagelike rub of his chin. 

 He throws up his hands and Dapper snickers at his father’s antics; Pomme lets out a sigh of relief. 

 But then Bad doubles down. 

 “I’m totally losing, what the fudge! I don’t—” he looks down at Dapper’s stacked pairs, and the array of yet-to-be-matched cards laid out on the kitchen table. “I don’t even have a hand! You pesky little memers didn’t even deal me in! What the fudge, kids?” 

 Dapper bites his cheek, his breath catching in his throat. 

 It would be so easy to write it all off as Bad just being silly, just poking fun at their lack of official Melissa & Doug Flip to Win Memory Card Game™ and playing into Dapper’s sarcasm as per usual. 

 But there’s a twinge of sincerity to his voice— not seriousness, Bad is incapable of being serious, but the kind that he gets when he means what he says— and it’s incredibly difficult to ignore. 

 Dapper ignores it anyway and collects a row of unturned cards into a hand for Bad, and another for the go-fish pile.

 They play the game like that— two of them playing Memory with a normal set of cards, and Bad, going fishing for cards that neither of them have. 

 It’s scuffed. It barely works— scratch that, it doesn’t work. 

 And it’s teeming with the unsaid. They play it off like a joke and laugh regardless. 

 He doesn’t think Bad knows what’s so funny.

 And though Dapper struggles to breathe between heaves of laughter, Bad still laughs the loudest of all.

* * *

 With the flowers rustling in the wind, the birds chirping in the cherry-blossom branches out front, and the laughter filling the walls every time Richarlyson comes over to play, the cottage is anything but quiet. 

 The silence grows all the same. 

 Each morning, Dapper spreads avocado on toast for Pomme and whichever species of tapeworm is responsible for his father’s appetite to enjoy. Pomme pokes fun at him for the repetition, but he’s been raised by a millennial and he likes the routine. He’s autistic, sue him. 

 Each day, after breakfast, Dapper helps Pomme with the dishes and she helps him take care of his menagerie. They spread seeds for mystical birds and brush the fur of definitely-not-kidnapped wild mammals, and Bad hovers nearby and watches.

 Each afternoon, Dapper tinkers with spare parts. He doesn’t ever make much— he’s too busy thinking .

 And each evening, he returns to the kitchen to make dinner. Pomme continues to flame him for his limited palate, and so he flames her right back for being spoiled and French, and they giggle about it with the ghosties that stray out of their father’s orbit. 

 Bad always thanks him for dinner, but it’s always delayed, long after they’ve finished and cleaned up. He doesn’t have pupils for Dapper to follow his gaze with, but it doesn’t matter, because the silence alone is enough for Dapper to tell. 

 His normal non-stop chatting and joking and fretting— his gentle, ever-constant teaching— is reduced to only a memory in Dapper’s mind. 

 Instead, Dapper does the teaching now. 

 He collects field notes and data figures and new ways to assemble machinery, and he shares them all with Pomme. He corrects her stances with the scythe when Bad is too busy coughing to do it himself, and he adjusts the grip on her sword hilt with an authority that shocks even himself. 

 He teaches her math and science and Spanish and the arts, even though he knows she’s old enough now to study on her own. 

 And he teaches Bad, too. 

 He teaches them the names of the flowers he brings back for the dinner table, time and time again.

 He teaches him the names of the birds that sing in the trees, the names of their pets, the names of the colors that Bad claims to have forgotten (and Dapper is less certain that he’s serious— how can you forget colors? It’s the first thing you learn in preschool) in the absence of his kids.

 It’s fine. Things are calm. Pomme’s studies are going better than ever and Dapper’s managed to extract most of the soul-vulture venom from Bad’s system, barring his now permanently blue stained eye and the clump of rot embedded in his skull. 

 The cottage is safe.

 Things should be getting better. Dapper should be able to relax, and focus on regrowing the farm they left behind so long ago, and focus on finding new creatures to study (and abduct from their homes), and focus on charting the constellations in the new observatory to use in stories for Pomme. 

 But he can’t.

 Because Dapper isn’t stupid. Because it starts out small, like most fissures do, and he knows the problem is widening and cracking and splitting into a great, all-consuming chasm.  

 His teaching quickly goes beyond the innocuous names of species that Bad might never have heard of before, and the names of a few pets among thousands in his menagerie, and the names of increasingly vague colors, from chartreuse and vermillion and verdigris to red and yellow and blue. 

 He teaches Bad the name of the other islanders, and at first, Pomme listens too. 

 Spreen, Vegetta, DanTDM.  

 Names that people haven’t spoken in years. Names that Pomme’s never even heard. Names that are reasonable to forget.

 But over time, even Pomme starts to recognize them where Bad fails to.

 Kameto. Tilín. Polispol. Bobby, Tubbo, Philza, Antoine, Fit.

 The guise of probable deniability shatters. 

 Baghera, Aypierre, Maximus, Cellbit, even Foolish— none of them ring a bell anymore. 

 Dapper stops being able to ignore Pomme’s worried gaze every day at breakfast. He stops being able to resist gritting his teeth whenever Richas pokes fun at Bad’s memory. He stops being able to breathe, holding his breath in the long stretches of silence where Bad forgets where he is, who he is, what he’s doing. 

 It’s hard— it’s so hard to pretend that everything is normal. 

 He stops being able to stomach it. 

 He keeps making jokes and acting like nothing’s wrong anyway. 

 It’s for Pomme, he tells himself, She needs this.

 It’s for Bad, he tells himself, Upsetting him will only make it worse.

 And he’s lying. It’s not for either of them, but it’s fine, because the lie is enough to get him through the days. 

 It’s enough to fuel him through the long nights, where he sneaks away to lose himself in the library at Spawn, reading about radiation and brain damage, causes for coughing and memory loss, angels and demons and reapers and the afterlife and anything that could help him.

 None of it does.

 Bad starts leaving the ghostie-bell with him for longer. They swirl around him while he studies (medicine, necromancy, theology, potioncrafting, everything) and chime in occasionally, telling him things he already knows.

 They tell him that Bad isn’t sleeping— and though their credibility comes and goes, Dapper is sure it’s true.

 He isn’t sleeping either. 

 Each night, the scent of frankincense— and myrrh, and other smells he doesn’t recognize— wafts through the house, cloying the air and suffocating Dapper, drawing him away from his studies. 

 He reads that frankincense is an anti-congestant, and myrrh reduces inflammation, and he hopes that’s all Bad’s burning it for. His cough, nothing else.

 He knows it isn’t, because he’s Bad’s child alone. On top of his draconic features— his night-dark scales and razor-sharp horns, he has features that the other kids don’t. 

 Instead of webbed and sinewy like Ramon and Richas’, or delicate and fairylike like Pomme and Lullah’s, his own wings are densely feathered— 

 —which isn’t particularly unique, he’ll admit. Tilín and Bobby had white and grey feathers respectively, and Chayanne’s are just like his, black as ink and ichor and death in the fourteenth century. 

 But there’s a key detail missing between them. The other kids’ parents all have feathered wings to match. Bad does not. 

 Bad has an impossibly ancient wound, reopened by time and a blast of glowing green radiation. 

 Bad has horns like Dapper’s and eyes as white as the stars ( the heavens, he dares to say), and so Dapper knows what is happening even before he finds the courage to listen through the cracks in Bad’s door. 

 Bad spends his nights praying, repenting, crying for forgiveness. He begs for deliverance, he begs for contrition, and he begs that someone will look after his kids when he’s gone. 

 Bad is terrified, and that terrifies him.

 He knows he could knock on the door and Bad would put a stop to it all in an instant, snuff out his incense and shut his prayer book and rise from the floor. He’d be at his side with a soothing smile before Dapper could even begin to formulate his question— before he could even hang an accusation in the air. 

 You’re dying. Are you dying?

 It’d be so easy to confront him. It’d be so easy to get him to stop, to cry where Dapper wouldn’t hear it, to let him sleep without the sound of wailing keeping him awake.

 But he doesn’t. 

 He lets Bad have his peace, he lets him find his comfort, and lets him keep one of the only constants he still has. There’s no point in stopping him, so he just focuses on his research instead.

 The sounds make it very difficult to concentrate. 

  He tries anyway, because there’s nothing else he can do. 

* * *

 The cruelest part about it all, funnily enough, is the good days. 

 They give Dapper hope. 

 On most days, now, Bad is a shadow of his former self.

 He sits and he eats and he tries his best to dote on his kids (to little effect), but apart from that, he’s pretty much unresponsive. It’s all just coughing, staring, and praying.

 Today is not one of those days. Today, the sun shines through the parted clouds. 

 Today they’re at Spawn— a rare departure from the cottage. Dapper is honestly shocked that Bad’s bones hadn’t given out on him halfway through— like, just imagine it. 

 He can picture it clear as day. Bam. Middle of nowhere, perfect comedic timing, Bad steps on a pebble and it rolls out from under him, he comes crashing down, his legs snap like a twig, and he crumbles into dust like a poorly kept artifact. 

 It’s terrible to think about. 

 But, as Dapper already iterated, that did not and does not happen.

 They stop by Tubbo’s hole, where Sunny and Empanada are sitting in the grass around the edge, weaving flower crowns from weeds and what Dapper will describe as unripe dandelions. 

 Too soon to wish on.

 Too late to save them.

 Dapper chats with Tubbo about his latest tunnelbore and Bad joins Pomme in the circle of children, gingerly taking clover stems into his claws like he’s afraid they’ll break. He clearly struggles to understand the technique, and so Empanada walks him through it, tying and untying knots once, twice, until it finally sticks. It reassures Dapper, but worries him just as much. 

 If Empanada is here, then that means one of her mothers— Bagi, Tina, maybe even Mouse— are sure to be nearby. 

 Dapper keeps an eye on the horizon, just in case.

 He doesn’t want Tina noticing Bad’s delays in response time, accusing him of being weird and insisting she’s on to him. He doesn’t want Bagi to approach and examine the glowing green gash on his back, because it takes less than a detective to connect the dots.

 He doesn’t want Mouse to amble along and recognize the residue of frankincense and prayer smothering Bad’s usual demonic scent. 

 His vigilance absolutely does interfere with his conversations with Tubbo, he’ll admit. Explanations of malfunctioning motors and unruly schematicannons go in one ear and out the other; it’s all he can do to nod and sign a sarcastic joke or two. 

 He doesn’t have to keep it up for long, though.

 “Kids,” Bad calls, and Dapper pretends like he doesn’t notice the lack of individual naming, “Do you want to learn a game? It’s pretty fun, I think.”

 The words are slow to fall from his mouth, like the pitch-drop experiment, Dapper thinks, complete with unfortunate timing and terrible happenstances to an almost laughable degree. 

 There’s considerable effort behind them, and it’s increasingly clear the effort Bad goes to to avoid coughing on the children. 

 But for the first time in weeks, Dapper recognizes clarity in his tone. 

 Empanada nods excitedly, and Sunny looks up from her newly-completed crown of golden flowers, and Pomme smiles, weary but genuine. 

 And Dapper’s shoulders soften. 

 “A game?” Tubbo only has human ears, but were he a dragon (or demon) like the rest of them, they’d probably visibly perk up. “What kind of game? Will it contain the answers to why my tunnelbore won’t fuckin’ run right?” 

 Bad doesn’t mention the language— he never does, nowadays— and instead brightens with mischief and adventure.

 Like a storyteller or streetside oracle, his voice swings low and lofty, and Dapper’s lungs ache with how much he’d missed it. “Oh, gather round, gather round, dear youngsters! From far and wide, from near and, uh, far again! Everyone can learn this game!” He flashes a pointy white grin from beneath his hood. “The more players the better! That means you too…”

 Tubbo, Pomme signs.

 “Tubbo!” 

 “Oh, alright, I’ll bite.” Tubbo drags his feet and feigns hesitation, but the curiosity in his eyes is clear. “What game?”

 Tubbo might not be sick of Create by now, but Dapper certainly is. He places his tools— wrenches, hammers, grabby dinosaur hand machine arms, the works— all back into his backpack and approaches the circle. 

 The flower crown group shuffles to make room for the two grease-stained, unlicensed engineers to join them; Dapper sits next to his father and the blades of grass are soft against his scales.

 Probably about to be, like, Dapper signs, Let’s see who can pop the most totems before the time runs out. I know I’d win, >:D

 How did he sign an emoticon, Sunny questions, to little effect. 

 Bad, in particular, has bigger concerns.

 “Dapper! No! No one is popping any totems on my watch,” says the guy who is literally on death’s door at every waking moment, as a form of employment and also a cause for concern, “And you would not win. I’d tank the hits for you, whether you like it or not.” 

 Dapper knows. 

 Bad’s got an enormous, irradiated wound on his back and a perpetual cough and a half-rotted skull to show for it. 

 Unlike a certain someone, Dapper isn’t going to forget that any time soon.

 Sunny pointedly clears her throat at the pause the group falls into, and then everything resumes.

 “Right! Okay, so this game is kind of a new thing, you know? Very trendy, I’m sure you kids have heard of it.” Bad clasps his hands and squeezes his eyes shut in a barely visible, close-lipped smile. “But it’s been a bit since I’ve played, so I’m sorry if I’m not the best teacher!” 

 Dapper hears that and instantly knows they’re all about to lose. Badly. 

 “Kind of new,” Tubbo snorts, “What is it, Jenga? Checkers? Gonna pull out an Atari for us to play?”

 “No, no, not that new,” Bad roots around in his backpack idly for a moment, then sighs. “Dapper, do you have any sheep bones in your bag? I can’t find mine.”

 Empanada, bless her heart, straightens up with wide eyes and a sign already forming on her fingers. Surely you don’t—

 But Pomme knows better, and only places a hand on her shoulder, solemnly shaking her head.

 Of course Dapper has sheep bones? What do they take him for, anyway?

 He retrieves them from the assorted-bones-pocket of his bag and scatters them on the grass; it is instantly clear what Bad needs them for. 

 “Dude, if you wanted dice, you could have just said s—”

 “Oh, someone’s too good for sheep bones, is he?” Bad teases, “Kids these days, so spoiled.”

 Sunny crosses her arms at that, even though the comment wasn’t even meant for her; Pomme wordlessly hands Bad a marker to write on the surprisingly even surface of the bones; Empanada whines and signs, That used to be a little lamb…

 Everyone ignores her, because her parents aren’t there to stop them and sheep aren’t even in the top one thousand least ethical animals to slaughter. She really has no reason to complain, especially when it’s Bad Unethical Boy Halo they’re talking about.  

 The game, as it turns out— after a long and hopefully intentionally meandering explanation by Bad— is Liar’s Dice, something neither new nor fresh nor hip with the kids, shocking absolutely no one. 

 It runs smoothly, all things considered. Dapper is familiar with the game from the get go (though he refuses to supplement Bad’s explanation, because he loves stirring the pot) and the younger dragons pick it up fairly quickly. 

 After one or two rounds, Tubbo suggests they play for keeps, and everyone agrees because it wouldn’t be Quesadilla Island if gambling weren’t involved at some point or another.  

 Sunny is surprisingly adept once diamonds are on the line— though Dapper suspects the stark change in skill is due to a difference in willpower more than anything else— and the adults present are more than willing to sponsor their children for some good old fashioned, broad-daylight, underage betting. 

 Things are… nice. Bad’s got his wits about himself enough to throw on purpose so Em can win a few rounds, and he only coughs intermittently— no fits. 

 And Dapper is finally— finally— able to relax. The ground is smooth and cool on the calloused, cracked surface of his palms, and the breeze is warm against his tired eyes, and the laughter in the air is almost loud enough to drown out the silence that’s echoed in his head for weeks.

 Pomme stops flashing Bad concerned glances every three seconds and takes her hand off the health potion at her belt. Empanada offers Bad a cough drop once and then it’s never brought up again.

 Things are normal. 

 A genuine smile— however hesitant and shaky— creeps its way onto Dapper’s face, finally. His pointed teeth and dark gums meet the open air for the first time in months.

 And then it all comes crashing down, because of course it does.

 The afternoon is long gone and the moon is beginning to peek over the horizon when Tubbo finally gets on his first winning streak; Spawn and the Tubhole are painted in desaturated silver and deep blues, and crickets chirp around them beneath the blanket of the evening. 

 And the only visible part of Bad are his eyes, which flash like the reflective strips of a PPE-certified jacket in the night. 

 Therefore, Dapper misses the change in the air— when it happens, he still isn’t sure; all he knows is that it flips like a switch.

 “One six.” 

 Tubbo straightens up sharply at Bad’s bet; he manages to keep his dice covered with his palm, but it’s a near thing. 

 He opens his mouth— under the moonlight, the shadows stretch long and grim on his face, giving him an air of eerie authority usually only found when telling ghost stories.

 “Call,” he says, and even Sunny raises an eyebrow.

 There is literally no reason to call here— it’s a lowball at best, and there’s no proving Bad doesn’t have the one six to fulfil it. 

 Dapper glances down at his own three remaining dice and sees a three and two fours.

 But it’s still a ridiculous bet. Between all of them, at least one of them should have a six. 

 Bad thinks so too, evidently. 

 “What!” He exclaims, and it’s shrill enough to leave him coughing after. “Why in the world are you calling here— it doesn’t make sense!” 

 But Tubbo stands his ground; the kids watch their back-and-forth like a particularly exciting Olympic ping-pong match.

 “Oh? You aren’t dis— you aren’t proving me wrong.”

 “I shouldn’t have to! That’s—” another cough— “That’s ridiculous!” 

 “Show me the six, then, Bad Boy Halo. I’m waiting.”

 Bad only turns up his nose. “Kids, go first. Show your Uncle Tubbo just how crazy he is.” 

 Dapper shares a look with Pomme. The trepidation in her gaze and the worry of her lip between her teeth is enough to confirm his suspicions even before they turn their dice.

 A five and a one.

 No sixes between them.

 “See?” Tubbo tries, but Bad cuts him off, increasingly frantic. 

 “That doesn’t mean anything! It doesn’t mean anything,” he says with narrowing eyes, “Unless you… know something. Do you know something, Tubbo?”

 “I know you don’t have a six,” Tubbo remarks. It falls on deaf ears.

 “You know something, ” Bad accuses, voice falling just short of a whisper. He’s addressing Tubbo, but they all know he’s talking mostly to himself. “You know something, don’t you, Tubbo? You can see our dice.”

 He breaks into a long, dry coughing spree, the longest of the night so far, and covers his mouth with his claws. 

 The motion reveals his dice.

 Two fours, a three, one five. 

 No sixes. 

 Bad was bluffing, of course, but Sunny’s uncomfortable shuffle— after she not so subtly peeks at Empanada’s hand— and guilty grimace really aren’t helping her father beat the allegations. 

 “What, you think I’m cheating? It was just a lucky guess, Bad—”

 “No, Tubbo. I know you’re working for the Federation. It all makes sense now.” Bad’s eyes are wild and glistening, and completely unfocused. “You’re— you’ve got cameras to watch the game, don’t you?”

“Fucking what? ”

 “You’re… you’ve got one of your Federation buddies helping you. Sending you our cards. I bet—” he practically jumps to his feet, stalking towards Tubbo and sending his sheep’s-bone-dice tumbling across the grass. “I bet you were just playing dumb, earlier, and you were going to have me wager where I lived—”

 “Huh?” Tubbo furrows his brows, eyes flicking between Dapper and Bad relentlessly. Dapper looks away. “Bad, are you— are you alright?”

 “Oh, I’m alright, ” Bad snarls, his scythe materializing just inches from Tubbo’s throat. “Now that I know your plan. You better watch yourself, Tubbo. Nothing will get in the way of protecting the eggs, and that includes you, got it?”

 “I don’t want to hurt the—” 

 Bad has already turned to leave by the time Tubbo tries to speak, making an abrupt, brisk, and stalking pace.

 In the wrong direction.

 Tubbo runs a hand through his bottle-dyed hair and turns his gaze entirely to Dapper, searching for some sort of explanation. “What the hell?”

 And Dapper—

 Dapper can’t breathe. 

 This is his responsibility. He has to be the one to deal with this, to clean up the mess that the echo of his father had made. He has to be the one to research Bad’s condition. He has to be the one to deal with this.

 He has to bear the blame; everyone had stared at him when they came back from Purgatory and he was the only egg still standing. Everyone stares at the gash on Bad’s back and knows it— the forgetting, the coughing, the outbursts— is all his fault. 

 It’s humiliating. It’s suffocating. 

 But he can’t just ignore it. He can’t just let it go— he can’t just let Bad go. 

 It all falls on his shoulders.

 And so Dapper only sighs and rises to his feet. 

 Behind him, Pomme signs an apology, and they trail after Bad together.

 Dapper can hear Tubbo questioning the others on Bad’s quickfire change in mood, but they have no clue, of course. 

 Only he does. Only Dapper knows about the soul vultures and the blast. Only Dapper has seen the glowing blue-rot embedded in Bad’s skull, without the veil of his hood to hide it. 

 Only Dapper knows Bad is dying. 

 It’s only his burden to bear.

 He just wishes it weren’t so heavy on his shoulders.

 He just wishes things were normal. 

* * *

 Dapper almost wonders if it’s worse that throughout it all, the only constant is Bad’s care for the server’s children.

 Bad’s love for him and Pomme. 

 Because no matter what— no amount of screaming and ripping apart their walls in search of a Federation camera; or praying to God, the Devil, whoever he seeks forgiveness from; or doubling over in coughing fits that leave his hands stained crimson; Bad puts his kids above it all. 

 He never coughs on them; he always refuses to lean on them when he can’t support his own weight. On days where he can hardly remember his own name, he still remembers to scrub the occasional dirt off of Dapper's face and still remembers to tuck Pomme’s hair behind her ear.

 He still remembers that Dapper likes to listen to Otherside when he chats with the ghosties.

 He still remembers that Pomme likes flowers. 

 He still remembers that he loves them, and it hurts.

 Dapper wants nothing more than to throw his hands up and throw in the towel. 

 He wants nothing more to do with leading around a man, out of his mind, and apologizing for his outbursts; he wants nothing more to do with long morning hours cooking and cleaning and compiling lesson plans and carrying the weight of his father’s life on his shoulders.

 But he can’t give up, no matter how far the surface seems to be, no matter how low on oxygen he’s running. 

 Not when the man who’s been with him from the beginning— tying his shoes, throwing himself in front of the code, begging Spreen to spare him, running away and leaving his home behind and building countless bases just to keep him safe— needs him. 

 Not when the only thing his father— whose eyes see no color, whose blood courses with soul venom and radiation—  has left is him. 

 Not when Bad is dying and broken and barely an echo of his former self, and still trying, still living, for him.

 Bad is still alive, and it’s all stubborn resolve— it’s all his love for Dapper and his refusal to leave him— that’s keeping him that way. Nothing else. 

 Dapper is not an emotional, or sentimental, or particularly caring person. He likes dark humor and he likes making the kind of bitterly-timed comments that make you laugh in shock, despite the pain. 

 He can’t laugh through this. 

 His father is dying. There’s barely anything left of him.

 And Dapper has been mourning for a long, long time. 

 He focuses on taking care of Pomme. He focuses on taking care of Bad. He focuses on taking care of his animals, and it’s all he can do.

* * *

 There’s a certain trait that being the son of a reaper comes with that most wouldn’t guess right away. 

 Death doesn’t just fascinate him. He’s drawn to it. 

 Whenever one of his animals— fruitflies, luna moths, usually insects— is close to the end of its lifespan, he feels it. He can’t look away. 

 It’s why he likes the ghosties so much, even more than Pomme, who gets along with them much better than he does. It’s why he decided on soul vulture venom as his failsafe. 

 It’s why, when he wakes up one day on the cusp between spring and summer, and his chest aches, pulling him towards the dining room, he knows. 

 Pomme doesn’t have the same sixth sense that he does, but evidently, she doesn’t need it. 

 She’s there before he is, crouched by the heap of black robes on the floor, with pinched eyebrows and pursed lips and barely contained tears painting her eyes red from the sting. 

 Dapper, she signs, and he knows she knows.

 It’s been too long, and he hasn’t gotten better. His research has led to dead end after dead end; normal medicine doesn’t work on Bad and neither does necromancy, neither does thaumaturgy. Pomme has learned a lot from him, and she’s smart—

 And no matter how hard he’s tried to keep it from her, she knows.

 Anyone who has ever heard literally anything about an elderly relative knows that falling is usually the first sign. The beginning of the end.

 Dapper loves all animals, but—

 Canaries in coal mines? They just make him sad.

 He hates being sad, and so instead he signs, Help, he’s fallen and he can’t get up.

 That, at the very least, gets a laugh out of his sister, even if it’s watery and even if his heart isn’t in it. 

 And the laugh gets a reaction out of Bad. His head rises weakly.

 His white eyes are overcast, and his shoulders are trembling, but a small smile still makes its way to his face. 

 “Well, hello, Dap—” he shudders, clutches his head, wheezes— “Dapper! Hello!”

 He doesn’t look at Pomme. 

 She splashes him with instant health anyway, with regeneration, with strength and speed, hell, even fire resistance, just to try and help him. They both know it won’t. 

 Bad continues to ignore her— whether he even realizes she’s there is anyone’s game— and keeps his eyes focused on Dapper.

 Only Dapper. It all falls on Dapper.

 Hi Dad, Dapper signs, and Bad’s eyes light up.

 “Oh yeah, that’s right! You’re my…” he trails off and boards an entirely different train of thought. “I got you something today!” 

 Bad shuffles to reveal his backpack, clutched to his chest and tucked beneath his cloak, and hisses at the pain of moving. It doesn’t stop him from rummaging— no, when his hands still, it’s clear he’s forgotten why. 

 His eyes unfocus, and then he clears his throat.

 “Dapper! You’re awake!” He cheers, but it’s barely audible. “Do you want to visit friends today? I heard Bobby should be around! It’s been a while since we’ve—”

 He cuts himself off. His face falls. Tears build in his eyes, and he wipes them away, and seems to forget about it all.

 Dapper experiences nausea, heartburn, indigestion, and upset stomach all at once, just like the Pepto Bismol Forefathers once foretold.

 Dryly, he considers himself lucky that he got to skip over diarrhea, if only just this once. 

 Hey dad, he signs, this time, You had something to show me?

 “Huh? Oh yeah!” His hands close around something in the backpack, and he manages to pull it out before his thoughts slip away from him again. “I got you this!”

 He reveals the object to Dapper. 

 It’s— 

 It’s a little stuffed toy: a baby-doll in a diver’s suit. He’s never seen it before in his life, and yet it’s still painfully familiar. 

 The helmet resembles the one he used to wear, when he was much younger and the lights and sounds of the world overwhelmed him; the glass window of its face resembles one giant, beady eye, wide and pleading.

 Nostalgia clogs his windpipe, and tears prick at his eyes. He wipes them away. 

 “I thought you might want to— ahem— play with it?” Bad offers, and Dapper reaches out to take it from him. “I know this is all… the rage with kids your age, even if we don’t have much…”

 It’s been a long, long time since Dapper was young enough to play with plushies— he’s a teenager now, with real animals to play with— and it’s been a long, long time since they were considered poor on the server. The literal bottomless pit of a backpack between them proves it. 

 Wherever Bad’s mind has gone, it isn’t here and now— it’s then, years ago when he first adopted Dapper and Quesadilla Island was a much different place. A different time. 

 Dapper doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time to play with toys— he has to make breakfast, he has to feed the animals, he has to clean the baseboards and do the laundry. He has to carry everything in the cage of his ribs, all alone.

 Dapper doesn’t have time to spend with his dying father, and that thought alone makes him sick. 

 He doesn’t have time for this; Bad doesn’t have time at all.

 The answer comes in the form of someone he really should be paying more attention to. Pomme sets a hand on his shoulder, and though it quivers, her tiny fingers are just as calloused, just as capable as his. 

 She doesn’t sign any words. She doesn’t have to. 

 They’re siblings, and best friends, and a look alone is enough to convey her meaning. 

 I’ve got it, her mismatched eyes seem to say, Let me handle it, please.

 And Dapper realizes, all at once, just how selfish he’s been. 

 Never telling Pomme what’s happening with their father, never letting her cook or clean, never letting her shoulder some of the burden, never letting her care.

 There’s a Halo Family Tradition of needing to do something, to help, to soothe, to handle it all, and he’s been denying her all this time.

 If he feels like he’s suffocating, he can’t imagine how she feels.

 Useless. Worthless. Helpless. Every feeling he’s been running from, hiding from, in his endless cycle of responsibility.

 Dapper swallows, hard, and nods. He lets Pomme take on a few of his tasks— nothing difficult, just the pets and dinner— and he focuses on the time with Bad. 

 It makes him feel sick, knowing that their father doesn’t remember his sister, but it would make him feel worse to leave him alone with someone he doesn’t know, leave him alone and terrified and without his son in his final moments.

 So he sits there and puts on a show, playing with the little stuffed doll like he’s young and carefree, like Bad still takes care of him instead of the other way around. 

 Dapper knows that tomorrow, Bad will die on the edge of summer, and never live to see its sun.

 But right here, right now, he can do his best to show him that warmth, even in the cool breeze of spring. 

 Despite it all, they end up laughing— Bad produces a second stuffed animal, a blue tang fish for the diver to encounter, and the self-aware irony of it all catches Dapper so off guard that he forgets himself.

 He forgets their situation, and he forgets that he’s too old for this, and he forgets that Bad is dying, and he forgets that the man isn’t himself, and he forgets that he never will be again.

 Instead, he remembers how to relax and let others bear some of the burden—

 He remembers how to breathe.