Chapter Text
“Uhh…boss, are you sure-“
“Yes, I’M SURE Mike! Just give her time! How can we expect her to HATCH if YOU give her stage fright!”
He’s been standing next to the wardrobe ever since it first happened. After adjusting to Castle Town and setting up everything in his labeled TV room, Tenna was perfectly content to just sit idly until Susie and Kris found him a new Lightner. A short hiatus for the TV’s number one host before his grand redebut. Everything was going to be JUST FINE!
Well, that’s until his little darling started moving and chirping.
At first, he thought it was the regular twitches his darling tended to have. The blue egg had a tendency to self-replicate. Tenna never held any love for the copies, so he simply sighed and got ready to throw the second imposter pretending to be his little angel into the vending machine of TV dinners.
But then it chirped. And chirped again. It never used to be such a chatterbox.
And then… a single crack.
That was certainly enough of a shock that Tenna felt he could cancel this week’s shock therapy session.
The egg was a gift given to him by a certain…someone back in the day. And like a lot of things that came with THAT NOBODY, Tenna didn’t really understand what his darling was. However, with his business partner’s behavior that day, he understood one thing. It meant a lot, and for all intents and purposes, it was significant to both of them. Well…at least he thought it was.
For a while, Tenna considered that maybe his darling was the secret to his partner’s success. A silly thought that was, but it’s not like he understood anything about Cyber Darkners! When it became apparent it wasn’t, Tenna started to view it differently. It was still a gift from his partner, so it must’ve meant something. Spamton… Spamton seemed ecstatic to present it to him that way, like it was one of the prized Cungederos the Addison worked on tirelessly.
When his mailman left, it became a memento.
Shoving it into the Z-rank room was his first instinct, like with everything tainted by memories of his lost partner. Tenna wanted to see it all burn. Cancel the show entirely. Put away the original soundtrack, tear the posters, crush anything car-related, and preferably break the phone into bits of plastic until there was nothing left. Toss the blue egg into the air and shoot it as target practice for his next re-run of the beloved cowboy show.
But when he picked it up, it chirped.
A soft, broken sound, like the whirring of an internal fan. Like a sob. It gave him pause even in that moment of emotional rampage. After a few painfully long minutes where Tenna was sure that he was losing his mind, it chirped again.
It didn’t hatch in that moment, no. Tenna wasn’t sure what he would’ve done if it did. Regardless, the broken sound it made had Tenna slumped against the wall, cradling it like a little gemstone. Static tears fell from his eyes as his thumb brushed against the blue surface, smooth like a worry stone. It warbled as he held it to his chest as if it understood his grief. As if Tenna's mechanical heartbeat was enough to comfort it.
Oh…what a tiny thing his darling was.
Tenna still kept her safe, and over the years he made sure she was cozy too. Nobody would ever find their way into the bonus zone without getting fired after all. It didn't hatch or change shape. Only made sounds from time to time. He began to believe that maybe that’s all she was going to be, and that was alright. He didn’t need her to be anything unless she decided to. As long as he could hear her tweet and chirp happily once in a while.
And now she’s hatching. Slowly. And he has no idea what he’s doing.
…Is he going to hurt her like Kris? She’s much more fragile than Kris.
A chunk of the blue shell peels off, blue membrane underneath it, softer, but still hiding what might be underneath. Open doors to the studio, but still behind her curtain. Tenna's breath hitches just looking at it.
His little darling, his little one. His FAMILY! Oh, no time for gloobiness; he is going to be the BEST father EVER! He’s gonna bake the best butterscotch pie and put together some amazing educational content for his little angel!
The fun meter will be whistling with delight! The scriptwriters will be writing in a frenzy to get ideas down! The censors will be there when they need to cut the fun time short for nap time and when the music channel gets too rowdy.
Tenna might not have the Dreemurr family anymore, but once his angel hatches, he will have his very own Dark World sitcom fam-
But... that’s not true, is it?
…Because someone has leapt off the stage and their absence left a hole where the heart should be. The quips feel hollow and unearned. The audience doesn’t feel as connected without the main relationship. It's impossible to watch the episode without questioning where the third person is. Without the full cast, the show he’s planning to broadcast has already half-heartedly faded into obscurity.
Tenna's antennae wilt and the tickling sensation of a blooming flower fades away. W-Well, it’s not like he’s entirely alone. He has Mike! Lanino and Elnina should still be willing to help him. Tenna’s sure even Queen could handle his darling once in a while; she seems so good with Lancer.
Spamton won’t have to make a reappearance.
It’s not like he NEEDED HIM-
I was BUSY, TORI. They need me there at the-
So busy you couldn’t even bother to come home?! What about Kris and Asriel?!
Tori-
They need your support now more than ever, but all you ever do is prioritize the case over EVERYTHING ELSE!
…
Tenna never blamed Asgore for leaving. Or Tori for kicking him out. He just couldn’t understand why nothing was like the sitcoms he broadcast for them every day.
It was never supposed to be like this. The family would fight and then by the end they all should’ve had a good cry, talked it out, and then sat down to eat butterscotch pie while laughing about the whole thing. The case could wait; it would solve itself eventually one day, and the status quo would resume with each new episode.
Instead, the show went from episodic to serialized. Gone was the happy family eating cereal, watching morning cartoons, or the cozy sleepovers with movie marathons. Instead, Tenna’s new broadcast schedule switched to more nights of Asgore or Tori sleeping on the couch, wine in hand. Or screenings of a crying child in a horn headband trying to drown out the sounds of their parents yelling upstairs.
A broken home that not even the best Holiday special could fix.
Is this…Is this what his darling would see when it hatched? Tenna trying to hold the fort down and keep the status quo, when he failed miserably in the past? She would see it in first person, bloopers cut and all. It’s not like he could recast his little mailman. Not only has he tried already, but…
The sound of laughter as Tori joked around with that skeleton inside, drinking wine, while Tenna shivered outside in the rain… It had Tenna wishing he was left in the glowing snow of TV World. Even after the cold passed, the memory left a mark. Spontaneous additions to the main cast always left a sour taste in the mouth of the audience. It often marked the downfall of the show, a loss of viewership. A pointless reinvention of something that already used to work so well.
…Spamton and him worked great together too in their golden years. Their relationship was like diner-quality pie. A selling point that propelled them to the top until their relationship ran off course. Those were the best days of Tenna’s life.
Yeah…they really were. So... that was that.
He had to find Spamton again. With Cyber Darkners lurking everywhere around Castle Town, finding him shouldn’t be all that hard! He’s probably been making it big around the net without him. Surfing or something. But NOW that Tenna’s back in town, he can barge back into that crook’s life, reel him in to his TV studio by his dumb, short nose, and bleed Spamton dry by making him pay points for his negligence in raising his soon-to-hatch kid. Everyone loves kids, and parental neglect is DEFINITELY bad for PR!
A-And the censors shouldn’t be too bothered by it! Two Darkners belonging to two different worlds?! There’s always that one episode where two characters who are NOT in a relationship have to take care of a kid. It’s a fun trope, a good comedy classic! Nothing…serious.
…Heh.
He should stop talking right now. Pronto.
"Mike, look after my darling for a while. I'm going out to town."
"On it, boss"
.
.
.
Somewhere else, a cat awoke, the smell of a blue delicacy wafting through the digital darkness it chose to nap in. Tail swishing behind it, its pink and yellow gaze watched one puppet, once a pair of glasses in an inventory box, bolt up as if the reaper himself came to end its existence. A garbled gasp of glitches escaped the once-Addison's throat as the puppet gasped for air.
The cat’s grin widened for it knew that the puppet could feel it too. Like a faint heartbeat to something not yet given form. All resonating with the combined love and magic of two former co-stars.
How tragic. And how very, very interesting.