Archive of Our Own ^beta

Carlos opened his eyes. This surprised him, because the last thing he remembered was a hooded figure bearing down on him, and realizing that he was about to die.

He couldn't remember anything after that. At the moment, he couldn't remember much of anything. It took him a few seconds to even remember that he was Carlos the scientist. All he had of the last few hours was a sense of chaos, screaming, whirling motion, and blood.

Blinking muzzily, shaking his head dazedly, he pushed himself upright. A horror beyond anything Night Vale had ever put in his path before met his gaze.

Tattered cloaks were scattered around the street, the remains of several Hooded Figures. He'd collapsed beside the fenced-in Dog Park, which was no longer so fenced in. An entire segment of the fencing had been ripped away and tossed aside like so much wrapping paper.

The culprit was a nightmare. An enormous, dark monster that seemed to be all tentacles and fangs and claws, its features mercifully hidden by the night's shadows except for its three eyes, blazing red as hellfire. Even as he watched, it growled in a frequency that was almost painful to hear, and kept on shredding a cloak in claws so sharp that they gleamed under the moon. Maybe it was a trick of the wind, but Carlos thought he saw something in the cloak still stirring feebly, and heard the faintest sound of something like radio static. Another cloak hung gripped tightly in one tentacle, utterly motionless.

As Carlos stared at the beast, transfixed with terror, the thing raised its burning gaze to him. It made a sound like a million insects settling over an abandoned wheat field, and moved towards him. Carlos made a sound that would probably have been a scream in a less terrified man, scrambling desperately backwards. To his amazement and relief, it stopped in its tracks, falling silent. Something in its eyes...flickered. Something almost like emotion.

Carlos looked around at the sound of a shout from the Dog Park. As he watched, Intern Dana came dashing out of the trees, grinning happily. She moved right towards the monster. "D-Dana!" he cried desperately, trying to will his frozen body to move. "Get away from it!"

Dana ignored him completely. In fact, she took one of the monster's lashing tentacles, and...hugged it. "Mr. Cecil! You came to get me!"

Carlos felt like the bottom had dropped out of the world. For several long seconds, he could only stare. And as he did, as the thing looked almost cautiously back up at him, he realized what the emotion in its familiar three eyes had been.

Shame.

Memories slowly trickled back. The plan to rescue Dana, the Hooded Figures that had ambushed them like they knew the two were coming, how Cecil had gone down under a press of them, how Carlos had been sure he was dead before Cecil had seemed to...explode.

Without even entirely realizing it, Carlos had gotten back to his feet. Moving like a man in a dream, he slowly, cautiously approached his boyfriend. And the whirling nightmare of tentacles and fangs and claws moved away, almost like a flinch.

"...Cecil?" Carlos asked quietly.

"Of course it's Mr. Cecil," said Dana blankly. "Why? You didn't know he could do that?"

Slowly, Carlos shook his head. "I...no. I never thought he could do anything like this." The warily lashing tentacles seemed the safest part to hold on to, so he did, cradling it gently in both hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...you just surprised me. I thought you were..." Dead, but now that he knew that Cecil was alive, even the idea of losing him was once again too painful to contemplate.

The monster shuddered, making a high-pitched, whining sound. As Carlos watched, it slowly stared to recede in on itself, folding and shrinking in a violation of the laws of space and physics that he still had to look away from.

"I guess he doesn't like to do this very often," said Dana thoughtfully, who was watching Cecil change with absolutely no problem because of course she was. "Because they don't like to admit that anything can beat them."

"But if he can do this...why does he let them push him around? Drag him in for re-education, or tell him what to say?"

Cecil had changed enough for vocal cords, and so he answered. "I don't..." he said, his normally sonorous voice rasping and weak. "Like it..."

Dana was ready, heaving one of Cecil's arms over her shoulder as he shifted back into a basically human shape. Carlos, with a bit of fumbling, got on the radio host's other side. His clothes had been fairly well shredded. Underneath, he saw Cecil's tattoos wriggling and shifting violently over his dark skin, like the ripples born from a stone skipped over a pond.

"Don't like it," Cecil mumbled, slumping gratefully between them. "Hard to think. Everything's so dark. All tastes like blood. Hard to remember."

Together, carefully, stumbling along a bit at first, Carlos and Dana went to work dragging him away from the scene. Seeing Cecil like this, seeing him so exhausted and shaken and troubled, Carlos couldn't help but ask:

"So why did you change like that?"

Cecil smiled the happy smile of the mildly concussed. "Because you're worth it," he said blearily, looking over at Intern Dana. "Valuable part of the station family. Getting too quiet in there. And you're worth it," he added, looking over at Carlos. "You're my Carlos."

And he'd flinched away from Cecil, in the end. Carlos felt like his stomach was about to turn itself inside out just from the guilt. So as they stumbled along together, he turned his head and kissed their savior lightly on the cheek.

"It's okay, Cecil. We'll protect you now."