Special thanks to siriuslovesremus for being my beta on this. She is an amazing writer -if you like Supernatural she is writting a great crossover with Night Vale- and better friend.
And as once I read: spoilers from episode 23 "Eternal Scouts" but... if you didn't listen it yet why do you know Earl and why are you reading this?
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Things that Earl Harlan knows
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He is going to die. Earl Harlan, scoutmaster of the division of Boy Scouts of Night Vale knows he is going to die. He is so proud and so terrified. The two emotions meet on his chest, clearly in the confusion. Both emotions have been growing throughout the day, intertwining like a badge on having sewed in a band, until they reach a peak which is difficult to sustain at the same time that he is breathing.
But, in the pride and the terror, in the confusion, there is still some things that he knows. He knows that two of his boys are promoted today as Eternal Scouts, the highest-ranking that the Boy Scouts of the city know, and he is very proud of them: they are the first to achieve this honour and their achievement would be always remember. They are good guys.
Earl Harlan knows so many things. He knows that he has tried to do always the right and has guided his boys with all the nobility which he had been able to. He believes to has been able to teach them some of it. The honour, the values. Boy Scouts are a way of life.
He knows that he has made sacrifices and now, looking at Frank and Franklin and Barton, knows they are worth.
And there is Cecil, in front of him, covering the ceremony as you would expect from local radio. His childhood best friend, whose voice he heard in the radio ever day. Faithfully. That voice that has changed so much since they had known when they were just children.
There are many things that Earl Harlan knows. But most of these things not only he knows them. Any citizen of Night Vale know he was a good man, who always looked out for his boys. Any citizen of Night Vale head every day the radio and Cecil's voice -although none of them do it with the same nostalgia.
Earl Harlan is going to die. He is sure of this above anything else in his life, or disappear into the unknown void -which, in the case, is very the same. He inspires deeply. He has tried to do his best and he believed he did. He has many reasons to look at his life and be proud, to not regret.
But there is one thing he had never said, something that has been struck in his chest since he was seventeen and which every evening, when he turns on the radio, stabbed in his chest -only slightly thanks to time, but there is remained. He knows that he isn't going to have another opportunity. He has been keeping it for himself for too long and, now at the end, it has no sense continue to do so.
He always listens the radio when Cecil speaks. He always listens. But never speaks.
That's why, in that very important day, of so much pride and so much terror, so confused, there is something that Earl Harlan is the only one who knoww with complete certainty and has led him to the radio studio that time, one last time.
"We could have had something, Cecil.
Always remember that."
There is a little "please" he didn't say.
Always remember that. He will do. He always has been.