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Wait, Carl has a tragic backstory?! GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk thought. Followed by, That will surely be a hit with the viewers. Everyone adores a hero with baggage. Regret sank in almost instantly. She never knew… There was just so much she never knew. And she was finding it out during a TV interview, of all things.
His mother killed herself? And almost his father, too? She thought. And on his birthday…. The thoughts whispered like static through her fur.
“Your mother killed herself?” Donut asked, her mouth always a step ahead of her tact. “Your own mother? I didn’t know that. You always said she left you. I assumed she ran off with her personal trainer or something… You know what, I don’t remember you ever talking about her other than that. Saying she left you. Or your father for that matter. Miss Beatrice would never shut up about her mother and father.”
If not for the cameras and the growing chill inside her, she’d be crying-yowling-spitting. Anything she could do to express the pain that poor, dumb, repressed Carl would never air. Her eyes stung, anyway. Even through her many masks, she wasn’t a heartless monster. She wouldn’t let that happen, not ever. But especially not as long as Carl needed her.
They would not ruin her, not like Miss Beatrice nearly had. Like Carl never would, because he’d promised.
He responded—more to her than Rosetta, Donut thought. Would like to think. A rote yet sardonic repetition of his history: his mother’s suicide, father’s disappearance, the group home, the surely-stinky boys' ranch, couch surfing, joining the Coast Guard. The careful guardedness made him seem more fragile than he ever did in the dungeon. He’d hate that, with how hard he was trying to seem unaffected for their universe of rabid viewers.
Rosetta hadn’t stopped questioning him, something about his father and state custody. Donut barely heard a word—so unlike her during these interviews, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the horrible expression on his face. His eyes were so, so empty. She doubted the question had even reached him.
Carl could barely handle this. He could take so much, bear near infinite abuse in the soap opera-horror of their life, but the hell he’d known before? Before her and Miss Beatrice? That was too much.
Donut knew he was light-years away. He didn’t even notice when she jumped onto his lap. The only sounds in the room were Zev’s rebreather and Carl’s shallow breaths. She wanted to purr, to bring comfort and help him out of the riptide of memories that seemed to sweep him away from her, but she didn’t dare.
Rosetta bravely breached the silence. “Carl?”
Then he was off again, going on about being on his own and running out of food and that awful friend of his, Monobrow Sam—who maybe wasn’t so awful at all, even if she would maintain that he was smelly and loud. He had been there for Carl when he had no one, after all.
The next question horrified Donut far more than Carl, who just laughed it off like the oaf he could be. Being suspected of patricide wasn’t a joke! Not to anyone except him, at least. With her prestigious pedigree? Harming a family member was unacceptable—the lost profit alone could have gotten her put down if the damage was serious. But if Miss Beatrice had really tried to pair her with her uncle… well, it simply wasn’t worth thinking about. Even living with the caricature they had made of Ferdinand on the last floor was a more bearable prospect, and she’d still rather die.
Donut didn’t know much about Carl’s father, even now. But for his wife to try to kill him, and then for him to abandon their son, there had to be more to the story. If it were anyone else, the curiosity and drama of it all would kill her. For Carl’s sake, though, Donut hoped this demon could stay buried for a little longer.
When the screen changed, Donut expected to see something horrible. Carl’s father, bloody and lifeless, or maybe Carl himself, skeletal and abandoned, even though she knew neither extreme had really happened. The reality was still stark.
“When was the last time you saw your father?” the detective in the footage asked.
The detective’s tone was weird. Friendly, for an interrogation. Still, it was about as warm as when Blair was pissed at Serena in season 1 of Gossip Girl: plotting against her with a veneer of friendship too thin to really mask the venom.
The young, sullen Carl shrugged. He was tiny, frame swimming in a ratty hoodie that was nearly the same blue as his eyes. He had a cigarette in one hand. The other was pooled in the excess fabric of his sweater. Carl had never once seemed small to Donut before today, but now she couldn’t quite unsee it.
Nevertheless, she would need to tease him about his past life as a shrimp when the time was right.
“Carl, did you do something to him?”
“What if I did?” he responded. His voice was higher. Not innocent, not after all he’d seen, but vulnerable nonetheless.
“Did you?” the detective needled.
Teenage Carl shrugged again. He took a drag of that disgusting cigarette. Trying to look cool, Donut knew. He coughed instead. Was this where he’d developed that nasty habit? What detective in their right mind just hands a child an addiction? And why in the world had Carl not just told this two-faced motherfucker the truth by now?
She had no more answers by the time the video stopped.
Rosetta went on about Carl’s father and his arrest warrant for child abandonment. Good, Donut thought. I might not know everything, but that man deserved to be covered in peanut butter and thrown to feral cocker spaniels.
Something Rosetta said about his father caused Carl to stiffen slightly, though Donut couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe the fact that the police had been so close to bringing his father to justice during the traffic incident, and it had never happened? Regardless, he finally seemed to realize she was there, if the reflexive pet on her back was anything to go by.
Carl tried to dismiss his own Tragic Backstory©. “This is ancient history,” he said. “Nobody cares about any of this stuff.”
WRONG, Donut thought. I care, you absolute idiot. In her ignorance, she’d just hoped for the best. Unremarkable parents and a normal childhood so bland it hadn’t been worth talking about. If only that had been the case.
“That’s not even a little bit true, Carl,” Rosetta said, in agreement with Donut’s inner monologue. “But you’re correct on one point. None of this is new. Odette’s special on your life, which recently tunneled, touched on all of these points.”
Donut didn’t hear another word for a moment. First off, why did Odette and the entire universe get to know all of this before her? What gave them the right? But then again, nothing about their situation had ever been fair. Anyway, Donut figured that if Odette had a special on Carl’s life, that meant she had to have one on her, too, right? The Princess Posse would love it, not to mention her ratings would probably be even better than Carl’s. Though, why hadn’t she seen any fan messages about it? Surely it just hadn’t aired yet. Oh, how she hoped they included clips from the Cleveland show—not only had she been glorious as ever, but she hoped that Spice Mountain of Cinnamon’s monumental defeat was displayed for the whole universe!
Once she realized where the conversation had drifted, Donut felt horrible for her lapse of attention.
Carl was saying, “It wasn’t ideal, but looking at where I landed, I think sometimes my mother was right. That it was the best possible outcome.”
Rosetta looked as surprised as Donut felt. “Wait, right in what? Right in killing herself?”
Carl didn’t answer, not really. And that silent hesitation was one of the most terrifying things she’d ever heard. Donut knew Carl was willing to sacrifice his life, especially for the greater good. Or the smaller good, really—he’d die to save a friend without hesitation. He’d tried to more times than she was comfortable with. Sometimes he felt ready to die on a whim, though Donut wouldn’t say that part aloud. This confirmed something, though. The issue ran deep, and soaked into more than just the split-second, life-or-death scenarios they’d faced a million times already. If his mother’s attempted murder-suicide was right… Well, Donut didn’t trust that Carl would be safe, even if they survived the dungeon.
But Carl continued past that unacknowledged bombshell, as he was wont to do.
“I joined the Coast Guard right after I turned 18, and everything worked out okay until aliens decided to come along and destroy…” he trailed off mid-thought, staring intently at one of the photos from his past.
Then he and Rosetta started talking about cooking, of all things. With milk and potatoes. Who makes stew with milk and potatoes?! It was as asinine as it was surprising, considering Carl had been gearing up to call out the deep injustice of the crawler system. Once he started charging toward anti-establishmentarianism, he rarely stopped until he knocked down someone high-profile. Also, because Carl didn’t know how to cook.
She’d never forget the indignity of batter permeating every follicle of her fur, that one time he’d tried to make pancakes. Thank heavens she got to set him straight on this show; hopefully, the spectacle didn’t make it onto the special about her life that simply had to be airing soon.
The stupid liaison cut the conversation off early. His accusation about Carl and Rosetta talking in code was probably the most logical thing the beast had ever said. At least it answered one question. Carl might be a hopeless cook, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Stew with just milk and potatoes? Never.
Good, she thought. Code or not, if Carl had to keep talking about his past, he was going to crack like a dam in Larracos.
When the liaison left, and they returned to the green room, Donut supposed it was finally time for them to have The Conversation About What Just Happened.
She was wrong.
Carl let her get her piece out, sure, and she thought she did a damn good job of being supportive and empathetic. And his logic made sense. I don’t want to be defined by things I have no control over, he’d said.
Then came the weak, trembling smile he’d given her. An orison. An honest, desperate bid for her to let the conversation drop. Donut wasn’t happy about it, but if this was all it would take to answer his prayer, she wouldn't push. She provided what comfort she could, jumping up on his shoulder and changing the topic to Odette’s specials.
Zev confirmed that Donut’s show was totally happening, airing that night. It was almost enough to cheer her up; almost, but she played the part perfectly anyway.
It would never be enough, and Donut was so, so scared. The past and present were jaws closing slowly, trying to swallow Carl whole. She didn’t want to lose her person. She got closer to it every second.
Maybe I can try again later, she thought.
She knew it was a lie. Donut would just have to hope that, when the time came, Carl would choose to stay with her. Like he promised.